Rocky Road
by JMK758
Summary: Gibbs and his team are confronted by a congruence of cases - but whose hands are behind the murders?
1. It's Over!

This is my twenty-ninth NCIS Mystery and the ninth of my Third Season. The list of stories got so extensive I moved it, with summaries, to my profile.  
There are also numerous stand-alone and spin-off stories also listed in my profile.  
Belisarius Productions owns NCIS and the usual legal disclaimers apply. The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center [pronounced Fletsee] is a real facility in Georgia, just as the USS Ronald Reagan is a real Aircraft Carrier (CVN-76), but in all cases the personnel and their techniques are fictionalized.  
My series diverged from the televised version in Season 4, and since I publish a chapter a week it is now nearing the end of Season Five, but with considerable differences. Since I long ago wrote stories that have Jennifer Shepherd and Michelle (Lee) Palmer alive in the 2030's, they never suffered the later-filmed fates of their on-screen personas.  
We're coming up on a year since 'Superheroine Affair', the story that launched this series. References are made here to 'Jurisdiction' and other early stories.  
I own only characters such as Samantha Sky, Rev. Siobhan (Sha-vonn) McGee and original agents. This story takes place two weeks after 'Let Down' and a week before the Memorial Day weekend.  
Rated T or NCis-17  
Please Review.

Rocky Road  
by JMK758  
Chapter One  
It's Over!

When Jimmy Palmer wakes it's still black night outside the window to his right. He's still exhausted from yesterday's three successive autopsies that kept him at work until after midnight. Even when his questing hand finds his glasses on the night table beside him and he pulls them on, he still can't focus on the red lighted numbers on the clock/radio beside the lamp.

Touching the brass stand twice brings the three small bulbs to two-thirds illumination and he can read 3:37. Barely more than two hours since he crawled into bed? He's so tired he doesn't remember doing that.

He looks beside him to Michelle, but sees just the flat mattress.

The bedroom door is closed but when he gets up, his body aching like he's just gone fifteen rounds with Sugar Ray Leonard - until he remembers he's a lover, not a fighter - and opens the door he sees the living room light on at the other end of the short hallway past bathroom and closet.

Clad only in boxers he pads out, squints in the 200 watt glare, but when he steps into the large room he sees Michelle seated sideways on the couch to his left, legs stretched out, her petite body turned away yet almost lost in the large blue blanket she's wrapped herself in. She's awake but doesn't look back at him. Her normally straight black hair is a tangle mess.

"'Chelle?" Is that a flinch? Does she huddle further into the blanket, shoulders hunched? He steps beside the couch, she looks up to him and his heart stops.

Her swollen face is a mask of dark, dried blood. Her left eye is swollen almost shut, the huge blue/black bruise an inch wide circle about it. Her swollen lips are split in three places while blood, now dried to brown lines, had flowed from her nose and mouth, smeared along both bruised cheeks. There's a cut on her forehead and brown dried blood had trailed down the left side of her face.

The only thoughts that take fragmented shape are 'What happened? What _bastard _did this?'

x

Jimmy's too stunned, then too outraged to speak. With a sigh Michelle lets the blanket fall from her shoulders and upper chest as she lies back against the couch's armrest. She's naked and bruises cover her, her upper body pockmarked with large livid bursts of pain. Her left breast is blackened, swollen larger than her right.

_Is THIS how Agent Gibbs takes care of his agents_?

"My GOD, 'Chelle!" the words burst out of him. "What _happened_?"

"What do you _mean _'what happened'?" she demands, her hate filled words slurred through broken, bloodstained lips. "_You_ _happened_!"

Her fury mutes him. He can't take the words in and she flings the blanket aside. Bruises cover her from shoulders to crotch. Dried blood had flowed and smeared from several cuts and lacerations. She glares up at him; fury and hatred strangle her words: "You _beat _the _hell_ out of me!"

x

Horrified, he raises his hands as though to ward off the incredible image and the backs of his hands are covered in dried blood. He stares at the damning sight and pain in his bruised knuckles only now registers.

"'_Chelle, I_–"

His incredulous burst makes her pull away, yank the blanket about her again like a shield, turn on the couch to hide against its back, to seek its soft protection. "_Get away from me_!" she cries, a near scream ripped from her. "DON'T TOUCH ME!"

"'Chelle!" This is impossible. He couldn't have–

"Keep away from me you – you _MANIAC_! Just keep away. Don't _touch_ me!"

"'Chelle, I didn't…." In reaching out to her, he's presented with his bloody hands again. "I didn't do this."

She glares back to him, the hate on her broken face a stab to his heart. Incredulity turns to misery and she starts to cry. Broken sobs wrack her body.

"You… damned..." she cries so hard the words barely make it through her broken lips, but they lash his soul. "_BASTARD_!"

"'Chelle…."

"I only wanted to heellllp," she turns from him, her face pressed to the protection of the couch back so it smothers her weeping. "What'd you _do _this for? I just wanted to help!"

"'Chelle, I swear to God I don't remember. I'd _never_ hurt you."

"You … lying …" she sobs so hard she can barely form the words, "_Bastard_! Get away from me!" She looks back, hatred at war with misery. "Get _away _from me! I never want to see your face again!"

He backs away from her tears, from her murderous fury, but when he reaches the doorway, so consumed by guilt he can barely think, all he can say is "I'm sorry."

"_Get out of here_!" she screams and turns back to the couch, but as he turns away into the hallway her muffled shriek hits him from behind. "MOVE – _OUT_!"

He goes down the hall into the bathroom, closes the door, but nothing can cut him off from her loud weeping.

x

He turns on the water tap, unable to believe this has happened - is happening. They've been in 'Couples Counseling' with Chaplain McGee for five sessions; he's been seeing NCIS' Psychiatrist Milton Gyves ever since he'd shot and killed George Franklin so many months ago, but nothing's helped. It's harder to open up at the Church, to a woman. Even though she's a priest, she's not an anonymous one.

But in all that they'd stuck together, he and 'Chelle. Their love carried them through all the dark times and now she's sobbing in the living room and he holds his hands under the lukewarm water, her dried blood gradually sloughing off his bruised knuckles.

How did it happen? He can't imagine _ever _hurting her. He adores her - and now he scrubs her blood off his hands, watches the flakes run down the drain and her sobbing in the living room stabs his heart.

Even in his nightmares she'd stuck with him. Even when he stopped seeing Gyves she'd stuck with him. She'd been angry, frustrated but she'd stuck with him. Director Shepherd made him return to Gyves, Mother McGee helped him, both alone and then the three of them together, but no matter what happened he and 'Chelle were together ... and now all he can do is clean his hands and listen to her crying - and at three-thirty in the morning he has no idea what to do next.

x

He turns off the water, dries his clean hands, his bruised knuckles dark accusations of vicious insanity. He has to be insane, he had to, if he could ever hurt the woman he loves.

He steps out into the hallway, all is quiet. Risking it, he calls through the short hall. "'Chelle?" but her immediate, hateful scream batters him.

"MOVE … _OUT_!"

xxx

Monroe University Hospital is nearly silent at 0545, nurses and other staff tread softly, perform their duties as quietly as possible and the approach of a young blonde woman to the nurse's station is nearly as unobtrusive. "Excuse me," she whispers, eyes alight.

"Yes?" Nurse Eleanor Michels hadn't expected anyone. There've been no emergencies on this floor; it's been a quiet shift, Eleanor's favorite kind.

"Hi, I'm Anne Wetzel, Bill Wetzel's daughter," she whispers. "I wonder, would it be possible to see my dad for a few moments?"

"I'm sorry, visiting hours start at ten." The sun's barely up but she won't say this, the woman's come from outside and must know it. There are no windows in these corridors but Michels does have a clock. Her eyes flick to the Duty Board. Yes, William Wetzel was admitted yesterday, he's scheduled for an operation at two. Doctor Rangan will remove some kidney stones and Wetzel will probably be out Thursday evening.

"Oh, but you see, I'm on my way to work," the blonde pest whispers, obviously thinking she can circumvent the rules with words. "I work in West Hyattsville, I won't be back until late and I really wanted to give him the news."

"What news?" It had better be good, urgent, cataclysmic for her to wake a patient and possibly - no, Wetzel's alone in his room; good thing.

Anne extends her left hand, the small diamond on her third finger catches the florescent light. "I just got _engaged_."

"Congratulations." Eleanor tries to put a little feeling behind it but it's been a long shift. It's also much too early for visitors and the one reason she does the 12 to 8 is there are no visitors.

But she reflects that there's no cause to be mean - yet. Rounds for medications and other services are due to start now, and she _is _supposed to keep the patients in (reasonably) good cheer... She hopes that a daughter's engagement will be good news.

"I suppose," Michels says and stands up, "that we _could _make a _little _exception, but only for a _minute_."

"Thank you."

"I can _only _let you stay for a _minute_," she emphasizes as she steps out of the Station. "Visiting hours aren't for four hours."

"I understand."

Eleanor hopes she does. Lots of people don't, no matter what you tell them or how often. She just hopes no doctor comes on the floor.

x

She leads the younger woman to the fourth blue door down the hall, almost to the end of her sector and quietly opens the door. The lights are off inside but the sun's just breaking the horizon so the room's not black, and the tabs next to the door confirm only the B bed is occupied.

She steps in first, uses one of the three tiny levers beside the door to raise the lights a third of the way. B bed, near the curtained window, is obscured by the white privacy curtain. "Remember," she says softly, "a minute."

"No problem," Wetzel assures her with a smile, enters the room and steps past the curtain. Eleanor quietly closes the door.

She'll wait that minute, then she'll discreetly enter to remind the woman that - a shrill screech rips through the ward.

She turns, shoves open the door and the initial angry reprimand dies on her lips. The woman's standing outside the curtain's range and screams again; Michels imagines it filling the entire building. She's not concerned with rules now, that was the first second, for the woman's face is filled with horror and grief and her body trembles so violently Michels is sure she'll faint. Wetzel's staring at the bed, looks like she's going to scream again.

Michels crosses the room in three steps and throws the curtain aside.

x

William Wetzel lies still on the bed, but there's nothing like the still grey of death. Eleanor slaps the Emergency button on the wall beside the head of the bed even though she knows it's far too late. Procedure. They fight for life until a doctor declares there's no hope left. She commands the woman to stand in the corner by the window.

Throughout the entire hospital a loud voice announces 'Code Blue, 3247' 'Code Blue, 3247'. It will repeat this over and over until it's turned off.

The heart monitor beside the bed already is.


	2. Please Forgive Me

Chapter Two  
Please Forgive Me!

Jimmy Palmer doesn't remember the past few hours, can't remember doing other than lying on the bed listening to his wife crying. Each time she seems near the end he's sure some new thought, probably of how much they loved one another or how much she's done or sacrificed to help him assails her, ripping new intensity of weeping from her. When the clock/radio on the night table beside him interrupts his thoughts with the News Anchor's voice at 5:00 he turns it off, and wonders how 'Chelle and his lives have exploded.

He doesn't remember hurting her, but he'll never forget the horrible sight of her bruised and bloody body. Her tears, her loud wails of grief are his guilt, her hatred his death. He should die. She's spent so long, done so much to help him, loved him so intensely and he repaid her by beating her nearly to death.

That he doesn't remember it is no excuse; the bruises on his knuckles are the damning evidence of his brutality.

He should die. She should kill him for what he did.

The shower's running, he can hear it through the wall and the closed door and all he can think of is to go to her, somehow make up, tell her again that he's sorry and beg for her forgiveness.

He's not sure what the furious witch will do, certainly something he deserves, but he's not scared of that. He's not sure, powerful as she is, what she could do to him, doesn't want to imagine what went through her that she didn't blast him to ashes while he was hurting her.

Could she? Was what was happening to her - what _he _had done to her - so unimaginable to her, as it is to him, that she couldn't defend herself? Will she make up for it now? He hopes so, because he wants to die for having hurt her, and if she casts him out, makes him move out - 'it's my apartment' - divorces him then he _will _die.

He can't stand the thought that she hates him, and she does hate him. She'd stood beside him through all the months of this nightmare and now he's hurt her.

'No, I _beat _her. I beat '_Chelle_! I beat her bloody, black and blue.

'I've _got_ to fix this. Somehow!'

x

He throws aside the blanket, crosses the room in two steps, yanks open the bedroom door, three determined steps and then the bathroom door. The heat and steam of the shower hit him and his nerve nearly deserts him.

'Chelle likes hot showers, one of the reasons he has his first is because he fears someday she'll use up all the hot water and all the other tenants will be on them and this isn't getting him anywhere.

"'Chelle?" he calls quickly over the noise of the steaming spray, expects a blast of what kind of whatever to blow him through the wall. "'Chelle _please _listen and let me talk a moment I'm _begging_ you! I'm sorry I am _so_ sorry I honestly don't remember but I'm _sorry_. I'd never hurt you and I am so _sorry_."

The water is silenced with the squeak of taps, all he hears now is dripping but he empties his lungs with mighty gasps between. "I know you can't ever forgive me but I _swear _I'll make it up to you _please _don't hate me I'll die if you hate me and I know I deserve to die and I'll understand if you kill me but I'm sorry honey. I'm sorry I swear I'll never do it again I don't even _remember _doing it but please _please _forgive me. Don't leave me I promise I'll never ever do it again just please please _please_ give me another chance I swear to God I'll never do it again. I'll go to Gyves I'll go to Mother McGee I'll cooperate I just don't want you to hate me please please don't hate me I swear to God I love you!"

"Jimmy?"

Amazingly, she doesn't sound angry or hateful or…. "Honey please I'm _sorry_. I promise I'll never _ever _do it again just please give me another chance I mean I know you hate me and you'll never forgive me and I don't deserve another chance and you can probably blast me into dust I know that and I deserve it if you teleport my heart to Outer Mongolia but please believe I'm sorry and I'll make it up to you and you can do it to me. You can take one of the baseball bats and beat me to death and I'll understand and won't defend myself or you can take your wand and turn me inside out and–"

She shoves the curtain aside, her wet face and body as lovely as he's ever known them. "Jimmy, what in the Goddess' Name are you talking about?"

x

Mouth and eyes almost equally wide, he stares at his lovely, dripping wife. After a few seconds he licks his dry lips but nothing else can pass them.

"Jimmy, if you're going to gape, you might as well do it in here." He can't say a word. "Come on, before we're late."

"'Chelle?" He knows her avowed specialty as a Witch is healing, but he's never known the effect to be so widespread or to work so fast. The bruises are gone, the swelling is gone, the lacerations are gone, she's perfect as the first day he'd ever laid eyes on her and knew he loved her. What Wiccan power works this fast, and why is she grinning at him instead of screaming her hatred and throwing him out?

"Sweetie, are you all right?"

He looks at the backs of his hands; they're not clean though he remembers washing them but the bruises on his knuckles are gone. He looks back up at her.

"No."

xx

Michelle sits on the edge of the bed wrapped in his huge blue robe she'd confiscated months ago and claimed for her own, but her hair is still slicked back and she's grinning up at him. "And then I said _what_?"

"You called me a 'bastard' and screamed at me to move out," he reminds her, barely sure she shouldn't be doing it; but as he didn't remember beating her she doesn't remember...

"Well, you are a bastard sometimes," she says and gives him a sly grin to take the sting out, "but this was your apartment."

"That's my robe too," he reminds her, relieved but trying to reassemble the pieces of this jigsaw puzzle world.

"And you're not getting either one back. But honey, just your thinking I can or would 'blast you to dust' or 'transport your heart to Outer Mongolia' - _ewww _- should've told you it was a dream."

"I guess so." Now he feels sheepish on top of everything else.

"I know so. And turn you inside out? Double _ewww_. No one has that power. That I know of," she can't resist adding and sees his apprehension respark. "But come on," she stands up, strips off the blue robe and throws it up upon his head so he must snatch it off to see her, "you can finish in the car but we've got to get moving or we'll be late."

"_No_!"

She backs away from his intensity but, remembering her earlier 'flinching', he reins in his anxiety. "'Chelle, I beat you and didn't–"

"Honey, it was a _dream_."

"Yeah, but _why _did I dream it? I'd never ever hurt you."

She gives him a slow, teasing smile. "You do spank me sometimes."

x

Standing naked and still slightly damp before him she barely has to remind him, but those are pleasures - mutual pleasures - but– "Look, honey, it was a dream," she waves her hands down her body, "I'm perfectly fine."

She hardly needs to elaborate, his eyes have met hers only once since she'd stripped. "And we can discuss all the 'ramifications of your psycho-drama' in the car but we have to get to–"

"_Let's call out_!" He mentally pulls back from her stunned expression but "I did three bodies yesterday and I have to – I want to – talk. We haven't _talked_."

"We will," she insists, "but we can't call out; that's ridiculous. You may not have work but I'm not that lucky." She steps closer, her hands encircle him but when she leans back to look up at him she gives his butt a fast squeeze to make him look up to her eyes. "Honey, I love you and I'm glad you _finally_ want to talk – _about time_ – but you should talk in the shower because we're going in and I can't be late or Agent Gibbs will be more pissed than you said I was." She steps over to her bureau, opens a drawer and pulls out her leopard-print bra and panty set.

Jimmy surrenders to his wife's logic, turns and leaves. They'll talk now, talk a lot, but she's right - as usual.

xxx

Anne Wetzel sits in the unused hospital room down the hall from where her father was supposed to have a quick extraction of kidney stones and she'd come to brighten his day with the news that Frank had popped 'The Question'. Now she's alone except for the nurse in the chair near the bed she sits on and the HHA Security Guard at the door, but the world passes by outside, a world that can't possibly exist.

"How can he be dead?" she asks the nurse again. The woman hadn't had an answer the last eight times she'd asked and since no one's come in or gone out she doubts the woman has magically divined anything.

"It was a simple procedure," she insists to the guard. "He's had half a dozen stones and things. How could he die?"

The door opens behind the guard and a man in a grey suit steps in. "Ms. Wetzel?"

"That's me." She mentally slaps her head; she's the only one here not in a uniform. Even the man in the suit is in a uniform.

"I'm sorry for your loss. I'm Henry Lancer from the Pastoral Care Office, I thought you'd like to talk, or pray, while we wait for a Hospital Admin–"

"I DON'T WANT A PRIEST _GOD DAMN IT_ I WANT SOMEONE TO TELL ME WHY MY FATHER'S _DEAD_!"

Since she's sure she's been heard in the parking lot, she expects someone to get off his ass and come in.

xxx

Michelle finishes buttoning her blouse, the circled star and cross charm suspended just above the button, her mind still on Jimmy's nightmare. At least it seems to have spurred him to want to talk. For in the past few weeks and even in Mother McGee's Counseling sessions, five so far, they haven't gotten anywhere. But when the bedroom door opens her pleasure mutates into annoyance because he's still dry and still in his boxers. "Jimmy, will you–?"

He holds up his cell phone. "I spoke to Doctor Mallard and called out."

She's amazed by his audacity, can count on one finger the number of times he's lied to call out of work - lied - and still have that finger left, but she supposes this nightmare's hit him harder than she'd thought. "Oh. Well, fine, but I have to–"

"You too."

x

She can feel her face, knows she's gaping at him, but that's because she can't think of a thing to say.

"I told Agent Gibbs you're sick." She feels her mouth drop and can't hold it up. "He says 'get better'."

"_Jimmy_!" Audacity is one thing, and she likes it when he takes charge but– "You _lied_? To Special Agent _Gibbs_?"

"'Chelle, I _need _to talk."

She needs to sit down.

xxx

Tim McGee closes his on-line Bank Statement after confirming what another on-line Statement has confirmed, and accesses his boss' duty roster to confirm again what Gibbs has already confirmed yesterday and all this with what Shav reassured him yesterday in her office upstairs, this morning over breakfast and again twenty minutes ago from the Parish office.

Everything's set.

Next weekend, just ten days from now - he has to include Friday as 1 in his countdown since he'll be working and the day doesn't really get going until Friday evening anyway - is the 'Greater East Coast Comic Art Convention' at the Hotel Meritz. Tickets are confirmed, hotel reservations - he's not driving back and forth to Silver Spring this year - are confirmed, he's off for the weekend starting next Friday at precisely 1600 and Shav's off except for Sunday morning, of course, and _nothing _is going to interfere with this Convention!

x

Forty-three of the most famous artists and writers in the Comic Book world are prominently featured on this year's panels. He particularly wants to see Stan Lee, who he'd missed last year because of Karl Hogan's interference. This year nothing's going to ruin his fun, _and he's going to share it with Shav_.

Okay, Katma Tui; she's already indulged all the way by buying the classic female Green Lantern's costume - which she looks incredibly _sexy _in - and red face make-up and black wig. She'd even gotten the power ring with a green LED controlled from a tiny switch in the band.

To avoid the 'bobbsey-twin syndrome' - thank God for on-line stores - he'd bought an authentic Captain America costume, and bought on Ebay – 'buy this now' rather than bidding – an authentic round metal shield which he doesn't intend to throw at anyone.

He'd've considered Iron Man if he could think of how to integrate a jet pack into the costume, but the thought of snuggling with Shav had led to his decision on the solidity of the outfit.

And if someone of the purist persuasion - like himself - is scandalized to see Captain America holding hands with, or making out with, Katma Tui, then too bad. Shav assures him her lipstick won't transfer, and as to the red make-up... he'll risk it.

And of course no one will recognize the bold adventurer Thom E. Gemcity nor the mild mannered Tim McGee under the blue and white mask of Captain America any more than the Reverend Siobhan (O'Mallory) McGee risks exposure under maskless scarlet face and a very affectionately snug and delightfully sexy green, black and white Green Lantern costume.

Three - _and a half_ - days of glorious anonymity.

And, of course, if someone does spot Captain America escorting the Green Lantern of Sector 1417 into their hotel room, well...

x

McGee - he has to be McGee for another week plus - shuts down his private plans and opens more appropriate files on his computer when he sees Tony DiNozzo and Ziva David arrive in the bullpen, and for an instant his mind flashes back to the least unpleasant consequence of last year's convention, his short-lived though intensely torrid romance with the Mossad Officer. He can never forget the excitement of those days, even though its end could have gone a lot better.

"Hey, Probie, you're in early." Tony's greeting derails memories a married man shouldn't indulge in, so he supposes he shouldn't be put out - too much.

"Grab your gear," Gibbs says as he cuts through the bullpen on his way to his desk to gather from his drawer his shield, ID folder and holstered Sig, "Navy Lieutenant Commander dead in the hospital."

"What's so odd about that?" Tony wonders. It's sad but true, Hospitals lose patients all the time.

"He went in for a minor operation, death had nothing to do with his condition."

Tony wonders again if Gibbs gets his information about cases not from a call from Dispatch but via a crystal ball or the spiritual switchboard. But speaking of spiritual, or in this case mystical, he has a more pertinent question.

"Where's the Probette?" He's looking past McGee to the uncommonly vacant desk as he gathers his equipment. Palmer is almost obsessive about being on time, commencing this back when she was Lee, a fledgling Probette on his own team.

"We're without her services today. She and her husband have the flu, they'll be back tomorrow."

"Catching the flu in late May," McGee empathizes, "that's no fun."

"How'd they manage that?" DiNozzo asks.

"And how do they expect to get well in one day," Ziva asks as she pulls her Blackberry from her backpack, annoyed her colleagues haven't picked up on this so-obvious point, "even if he is a doctor?"

"The _Blue_ Flu, David." Gibbs is annoyed by her blank look. "The kind you get from badges."

"You let her get away with that one?" DiNozzo asks but wilts under Gibbs' glare. "Gearing up, boss."


	3. A Simple Procedure

Chapter Three  
A Simple Procedure

Gibbs maneuvers his Charger into the Monroe University Hospital parking lot where he and McGee join DiNozzo and David beside the white and black MCRT truck.

"So you going to check in with your Confidential Informant, yes?" Ziva asks, her tone conveying that this is the continuation of her ongoing torment.

"No, Zee-vá, I am not. I keep my personal and private life separate."

She grins. He couldn't have gifted her with a flimsier straight line. "Your personal life is your professional one."

"At least I'm not McDweedle here. We showed up for an interview one day and he went and married our witness."

"Wasn't dating her then, Tony."

"No, but you worked fast."

"So you are saying you are _not _going to marry Doctor Jeanne Benoit?" Ziva cuts back in.

"I didn't say that. And look how many times our investigations put us together with CID." Barely in time he notices Gibbs' 'don't go there' glare.

"Then you _are _going to marry her."

"I didn't say that either."

"Yet you were willing to live together with her in sin," Tim points out.

"That was while I was under cover, and I don't need input from..." He won't go further on Tim's point, his dig might be interpreted as a slam on the man's wife and he's in enough trouble in that area. Besides, in the issue of himself and Jeanne, two years ago he also hadn't been clear with himself where he stood with her.

"I am not asking what you did with her under the covers," Ziva maintains.

"No, you've had a sample of that."

"Enough to know I do not want any more."

Gibbs has had enough. "If you two don't get to work there won't be any undercover work for either of you."

"You probably won't even be able to afford covers," Tim taunts, relishing the opportunity to get the last word.

x

Gibbs was willing to let David grill DiNozzo but only long enough to be certain he had his Senior Field Agent's full attention on this case, that it wasn't going to wander just because of his proximity to Benoit. The only thing he cares about Benoit is if the doctor has information pertinent to this case.

He'd also waited until he saw the white, black and red ME truck pull into the lot. Knowing Ducky's alone today, he'll have his team schlep for the man. Further, unlike some agents, Ducky doesn't waste time with a lot of useless talk.

xx

Four uniformed MPDC Officers secure the third floor, second section, left side while Hospital Police stand nearby, all having little to do in NCIS' presence. A too-large variety of hospital staff can't be kept from their patients and there's a greater number of relatives who can't easily be barred for long from their loved ones, but on the whole the corridor is kept reasonably clear.

The only place that's secure is room 3247. The agents must each print and sign their names, along with their ID numbers, on the Crime Scene Access Log held by the Metro officer at the door.

Within the double room, beside the victim, are a uniformed MPDC Sergeant and officer and two men who wear the ubiquitous stethoscopes, white smocks and manners of doctors. The shorter one is Indian, full face dark with annoyance while the taller instantly flashes Gibbs to Bruce Wayne's white haired British butler from the old Adam West 'Batman' series that Molly was so fond of.

The dark doctor introduces himself as Milon Rangan, the victim's physician, and also presents Vincent Chase, the hospital's pathologist. Gibbs didn't miss the flash of recognition between Ducky and Chase when they entered the room, though neither speaks before the Investigators.

Gibbs' main focus is the still man upon the bed beside them. William Wetzel's eyes stare blind at the ceiling, his grey face still. "What happened?"

"I don't know yet," Rangan says, color high in his dark face where all of Wetzel's has settled into the back of his head and neck, leaving all above grey. "Mister Wetzel was scheduled–"

"Lieutenant Commander," Gibbs corrects.

"What?"

"Lieutenant Commander, United States Navy; that's why we're here."

"_Lieutenant Commander _Wetzel was scheduled for removal of two kidney stones, one 6mm, the other 4.5, at 2:00 pm. He's in good health, I anticipated another overnight, he'd be discharged tomorrow. Any complications - and I expected none - would still have had him out on Friday."

x

"He ever have this problem before?"

"Those who develop Uric kidney stones have a heightened tendency for recurrence. This is the fifth time he's developed the stones. The treatment's routine; if he can't pass them with tamsulosin - we'd already given him an initial dose last evening - we use ultrasound to shatter the masses and the gravel passes naturally. As I said, I anticipated no problems."

"What happened?"

Rangan glances at the pathologist beside him, who addresses his counterpart.

Much of the conversation between Ducky and Chase is technical, as much as the functions of the human body can be considered technical. Ducky then translates for his fellows.

"The absence of Petechial hemorrhaging is significant. Blood samples have been taken, but the physicians must be concerned about bleeding as the blood must be taken from the underside of the body. However, there is a full series of blood, urine and so forth that must be retested to establish a baseline standard to compare with–"

"Ducky."

The Pathologists exchange an amused glance. "When Abby and I know, you'll know. There are, however, no apparent wounds; no gross cause of death."

"What about this?"

"Oh, you noticed that."

x

Ducky is the only man that may expect to survive such a dig, but the situation is not at all humorous. Though the Heart Monitor is attached by electrodes to Lt. Commander Wetzel, the leads running under his pajama shirt, the machine is turned off, rather than the usual of the alarm simply being silenced. Gibbs ignores his friend's tone, turns instead to the medical men. "Who shut this off?"

"It was off when the Crash Team responded to the Code Blue."

"So the Nurses on duty had no idea Lieutenant Commander Wetzel was dead?" He doesn't expect an answer so he's not put out not to get one. Instead he turns to McGee. "Get the information off this thing, then everything in the room goes."

"You're taking the monitor?" Rangan asks.

"We're taking everything." Gibbs normally wouldn't repeat himself, but he watches Rangan closely. For now, the man doesn't act guilty. He'll know more later.

"Boss?" DiNozzo, when he has everyone's attention, points to the clear plastic bag of saline solution no longer dripping into the tube attached to Wetzel's arm. The solution had backed up when the man's blood had stopped flowing, it now fills the reservoir. No blood has backed up into the tube, indicating to all that the man was dead before the liquid ceased flowing.

Half expended, the top of the bag should be compressed from the vacuum left behind by the downward flow of the solution, but it's not. Ducky reaches up, squeezes the bag and can feel the air escape under his steady pressure. He turns the bag over and the salty liquid dribbles from the top right corner. "I believe we have found our smoking gun, so to speak."

x

"We're told the daughter found him?" Gibbs asks when this evidence is carefully preserved in an airtight evidence bag and safely in Palmer's care. It's not Visiting Hours yet and they received the call quite some time ago, so what was the woman doing here so early? Checking on the effectiveness of whatever was in that saline bag?

"Yes, she's down the hall," Rangan says.

For now Gibbs isn't going to suspect her, not until he's spoken to her at length and obtained, from Ducky, Abby and witnesses, a timeline. "DiNozzo, photos and sketch. David, prints. McGee, while you make that contraption secure," he says, referring to the turned-off heart monitor, "I'll find out why the daughter was here at the crack of dawn. Doctor, where is she?"

xx

It's only a few dozen yards down the hall to the nearest employee lounge, this one guarded to a uniformed MPDC officer who admits Rangan on recognition and Gibbs through his shield and IDs.

When they enter only two people are in the room that's filled with couches, easy chairs and round tables for the products of the multitude of vending machines that line each end wall. The un-uniformed blonde woman quickly rises to demand: "What happened to my _father_?"

Gibbs' introduction and the reason for his presence are passed over. Anne Wetzel cares only for her answers and it takes about a minute for Gibbs to establish control and to get the woman seated.

"We're trying to find out what happened," Gibbs tells Anne from across one of the round tables.

"This is a nightmare." Anne rests her head in her hand, but then she drops that hand and exclaims "I don't _know _what happened to my father!" She points at Dr. Rangan and yet not to him. "I want _them _to tell _me_!"

"Did your father have any enemies?"

"En - what do _enemies _have to do with this? My father is _dead _and you ask me if he had any _enemies_? What do–?" Her eyes widen, her breath stolen in a long gasp. "Ohhhh, myyyy _GOD_!"

"We don't believe Lieutenant Commander Wetzel's death was natural." For now he won't mention the bag or the monitor. What does she already know?

"Are...? You're saying someone _killed_ my dad? _WHO_?"

"We're going to find out. Tell us about him, why he's here."

x

The story is essentially what Gibbs already knew, though it's told very emphatically. Lt. Commander Wetzel had developed pain in his left kidney while the Aircraft Carrier USS Ronald Reagan and its support ships were still a day out from docking at Norfolk. Having suffered four bouts already, Wetzel was familiar with the symptoms. Immediately after the ship docked for two weeks Service and Maintenance, he'd been brought by ambulance to Monroe University Hospital where his doctor is in residence.

Gibbs finds it curious that a Naval Officer would use a public hospital rather than the one which most Armed Services use. "Why didn't he go to Bethesda?"

"He hates Bethesda, always has."

"Why?"

"_I don't know_, ask _him_."

The answer would be uninformative, and possibly annoying, if that had been what Gibbs was testing.

x

"What about Karen?" Anne snaps. "_She _have any idea what happened?"

"Karen?"

"My _sister_."

"Where would we find her?" Any relative expected to have answers is someone Gibbs wants to talk with without delay.

"What'd'ya mean '_find _her'? She _works _with _you_!"

"Your sister's an NCIS Agent?"

"_Yes_!"


	4. Mission: Impossible

Chapter Four  
Mission: Impossible

Karen Wetzel, clad in black skirt, white blouse with matching hair band and red jacket, pulls a large serving tray from the heated catering cart, balances the warm tray on one upraised hand, pushes the white door open and steps into the morning cocktail party that crowds the huge foyer. An early AM Tuxedo / Dress Uniform / Ball Gown Reception seems unusual to her, but she's not here to question North Korean practices, she's here to take advantage of them.

The mansion's white walls highlight in pounded gold paintings whose frames, she suspects, each cost more than her week's gross salary. The gleaming crystal chandeliers cast pinpoints of light about the room, the tuxedos are crisp and spotless, lapels shine in the light and she's sure she'll never afford to wear one of these too elegant dresses.

She's invisible to these people even as she makes her way between men and women who net more in a month than she'll gross in her Investigative career. Karen makes her way from personage to personage, treats taken from the gleaming tray at every pause while she searches for the eyes of her contact.

Mun-Hee Tzien is a South Korean operative, an interesting person to have at a reception thrown by supporters of General and Dictator-for-Life Kim Jong-il.

Her mission - and no, she was not given a choice in accepting it; no smoking reel-to-reel tape message for her - is to break into Il's computer and download the entire contents onto a high-density 320 gig flash drive - then survive to get the information to Headquarters.

She was given the assignment six hours ago and spent the time researching everything she could find on the target building and the people within it.

In practice the operation is simple: access the laptop that follows Il wherever he goes, plug in the flash drive, run 'Omega' and pray very hard that the flash drive eats everything in a flash.

In the meantime, she must first hide and contain her nervousness enough to find Tzien.

x

The Chamber quartet in the far left corner of the huge foyer - her apartment could fit in this room and it's only the entryway - does little to soothe her jangling nerves. North Korea is the enemy. Half the men and some of the women who surround her are armed and her so-far too short lessons in Korean will barely cover 'don't shoot', though she doesn't believe Il's guards would listen even if they get her Arkansas accent.

Hyperaware as she is, the faces still seem to blend when suddenly someone brushes behind her; she glances right and Tzien is walking away from her.

x

She know better than to follow; such a change in her routine is like setting off a red flare. But she does keep Tzien in sight, usually through the corner of her eye, as she continues serving hors 'devours.

There are four other women prowling the room with trays of drinks and food but eventually her large silver tray is empty. She turns and works her way toward the door which leads to a corridor to the kitchen and her refill.

Tzien stands beside the door, chatting up a Lucy Liu-looksimilar, and as she passes he casually deposits an empty glass and folded napkin on her tray in blithe disregard for the fact that she's not the drinks server.

When Karen reaches the hall no one's in sight - more importantly no apparent cameras can see her - so she quickly snatches the napkin from the tray and slips it into the pocket of her red jacket. She doesn't have to see it to recognize the shape of the flash drive she hadn't been able to smuggle in in her uniform.

x

She enters the kitchen, sets the tray down before one of the chefs, disposes of the crystal glass, sets her long black hair more securely with the white band, announces 'bathroom' and heads for the rear door.

"_HEY_!" one of the men calls. Karen halts, her mind flashes to everything that can go wrong, up to a blown cover and a room full of Uzis trained on her. "Break after the reception."

She looks back, flashing to how she'll handle this. After Reception comes the multitude of courses, then dessert and a blown operation, but to challenge is to make herself memorable, the worst choice of an Undercover operative. Fortunately, there's another option: sass.

"This isn't a break, it's keeping the carpet dry."

She continues without another look back and sees one of the servers to her far right grin.

"You walk out that door, you're fired," the Caterer barks.

'Oh oh, I'll be remembered.' But then she remembers her target is upstairs - can't go up empty-handed - and realizes that, all unwittingly, the boss has provided her with an excellent prop. In what she hopes is the right amount, though not too much of a 'petty fit of pique', she snatches up a full tray of hors' devourers, crosses the kitchen and slaps aside the door.

Back in the foyer, her aggravated expression vanishes as she heads for the wide staircase to her left and her body language says 'these are for the boss'.

Unchallenged, she ascends the stairs and heads down the hall. The 'boss' is in the midst of the reception downstairs but as a server she's still invisible to the ultra-highly ranked people below. The bodyguards are doing their jobs down there, they ring their chief three deep even in this select assemblage. Il has ruled North Korea since 1994 and every man present means the dynasty to continue, hence the guards' attentions are on those closest to him, not on someone moving away.

x

Upstairs, Karen makes her way along the hall to the inner sanctum and tries the door. It's unlocked but the only alarms sound in her head. She'd expected to have to pick the lock, wouldn't have been surprised to need to walk, back to the building, along a ledge from an adjacent window.

Hyper-alert, imagining she could hear a roach chitterling along the carpet, she hears the Chamber music from below waft down the white hall but tries to thrust the notes aside, listens intently for voices within, for approaching danger without, for the susurration of a gun drawn from a holster.

What will she find when she opens this door? Should she scrub the mission? She has no such authority, too many people count on her success; but should she scrub it anyway, have NCIS fall back on a Plan B they haven't shared with her?

Not before she determines the mission is incompletable.

x

She holds her breath, tries to quiet her pounding heart, tries to filter out the distant Classical music and pushes the curled, gold handle down as slowly, as quietly as she can.

She carefully balances the large tray aloft in her left hand and eases the door a half-inch open, enough to see the light is on and there's no one on the right side of the room.

More quietly, more slowly, as much attention on the hallway as the room, she opens the door a full inch. Now, with her eye to the crack and her heart slamming hard enough to crack her sternum, she can see up to the vacant desk.

No one's in the right side and she dares not stay in the hall any longer. She steadies her features in a casual expression - she was ordered to bring refreshments to this office - she pushes the door wide and her pounding heart falls out of her chest to bounce upon her diaphragm. The room is vacant.

She sets the tray down on the nearest surface, a small table by the door, and closes the door as silently as she'd opened it.

How, when she knows her heart's relaxed in her relief, can it still be battering her sternum, pounding for escape?

x

She looks to the desk and feels every prayer she's ever prayed answered at once. The target laptop sits open upon the desk.

Karen can actually feel the odds of her surviving this mission increase with every second. She hurries to the desk, thanks God again that there's no password-protected screen saver and pulls the flash drive from her red jacket's pocket, pushes it into the USB port and gives thanks yet again when the green LED begins to flash rapidly.

x

Karen uses the touch pad to access the drive, runs 'Omega' and prays.

The green bar on the screen extends with agonizing slowness. It can eat 320 billion bytes but can't it move _faster_? It draws across the screen and she ages ten years for every quarter inch. Does it have to be so _slow_?

She starts to feel light headed, realizes she's hyperventilating and clamps her hand over her mouth to control her breath. It'll do no good if she's too whacked to get away.

'Come on. Come _ON_ you bastard! Can't you eat any _faster_?'

x

It finishes and she almost yanks the drive out before she remembers how disastrous that'd be. She takes a deep breath, holds it and forces herself to go through the stages in disconnecting the drive, waits the million nanoseconds for the computer to get around to letting the device go.

Karen shoves the drive into her jacket pocket, hurries from the desk, retrieves the tray from beside the door, yanks it open and her heart leaps back across the room and out the window.

x

"_Tzien, you want to give me a heart attack_?" she screams her whisper up at the man.

"Did you get it?"

She loads Fright and Anger into a Bitchiness shotgun and gives him both barrels. "_Yes_, I got it. Let's get out of here!" She can hear the Chamber group downstairs. She still has the damn tray, can't get rid of it up here without giving the operation away though it'd nearly spilled when she'd leapt out of her skin. But the mission's over, all that's left is to drive away while Lalo Schifrin's 'Mission: Impossible' theme plays in the background.

"Give it," Tzien commands.

'Guess it doesn't matter who brings it out, NCIS and S.K. both agreed this is a South Korean operation.' Balancing the tray in her left arm, she pulls the drive from her pocket, slaps it into his hand like nurse to a surgeon, closes the door, leads the way down the hall and her head explodes.

x

The hallway snaps upward. Karen flies forward, slams to the carpet, the tray rings like a muffled gong on the carpet, a knee crashes into her spine, new agony blasts her.

She's sure she's been kicked in the head, tries to roll over. Heavy weight slams her down into the carpet. She tries to move but she's pinned. An arm snakes about her neck, crushes her throat. She kicks backward, hits the body atop her but can't get any force. The arm, braced by another behind her neck, strangles her. She digs her nails into the arm, can't get a breath.

Already breathless from her fears, air driven out by her hard crash, she strains her starved lungs. She can't make a sound, can't even wheeze or gasp as the world starts to spin. She can't turn her head, can't pull the arm free. He has all the leverage, she has none; no air, not enough strength to fight his. The hall gets darker as she strains, digs her nails in harder, fights for the smallest bit of air, the tiniest gasp.

She tries to force the arm up, duck her chin, _bite _the bastard but she can't pry him loose, can't get air. Her lungs rip agony through her chest.

The world goes out of focus, turns black.

Karen Wetzel's final thought is that her partner will keep strangling her until she's dead...


	5. Death Review

Chapter Five  
Death Review

Gibbs returns to 3247, the hospital room of the late Lt. Commander William Wetzel, to discover that Ducky and Jimmy have already removed the man's body and that his team is packing their gear. DiNozzo, with a nod, conveys that a Forensics Team is already on the way to break down the room.

He'll have David hold the room. When he and the men leave they'll bring with them every medical sample taken from Wetzel and all the reports of the man's day here.

"Ziva, Wetzel's other daughter Karen is an NCIS Agent. Find her and get her here."

"Ouch," DiNozzo says, a sentiment reflected by all.

"Do you know where she is stationed?" Ziva correctly interprets his look. "I shall find out and summon her."

"McGee, get the Security footage for the past 24 hours; this area, stairwells, all entrances and the parking lot."

No visitor bent on wrongdoing can know where all the cameras are. Many perps try to hide their faces after they enter the building or arrive on a floor, but rarely will someone think to be as cautious from the parking lot inward.

This is more than a Naval Officer whose death they deal with now. Though it has to be a minor point in their investigation, this is next-of-kin to one of their own. When Special Agent Wetzel comes to him, he will look her in the eyes and tell her they are doing everything possible to apprehend her father's murderer.

xxx

Nearly an hour later, when Gibbs and the team return to the bullpen, they're mildly surprised to see Michelle Palmer seated at her desk. "Got over the flu pretty fast, huh?" he asks.

"It's those new wonder drugs. They work... wonders," she finishes with a shrug. She evidently knows there's no way out of paying for her husband's ambitious ploy but Gibbs gives her one; he doesn't mention it.

"We've brought in Lieutenant Commander William Wetzel's daughter Anne, she's in the Conference Room with Bramson. Relieve her and find out everything Wetzel knows." A few more sentences are all he needs to bring her up to date.

x

"Is hubby in too?" DiNozzo asks Michelle as she passes, but she doesn't reply.

The morning has been filled with many things, she and Jimmy have cleared a lot between them. For a time it seemed the floodgates had opened but always in her mind was her work, her responsibilities to NCIS and her team mates as they take on a new case.

Finally, unable to endure much more stress a.k.a. guilt, she'd called a halt to their session, 'announced' that they were reporting for work and they'd continue the venting later.

Anthony DiNozzo can keep his questions to himself.

x

Gibbs gives his people only ten additional minutes to settle themselves behind their desks. Lt. Commander William Wetzel's body is in Autopsy, the information from the Heart Monitor has been downloaded into McGee's computer, everything in the hospital room up to and including the pillowcases off the other bed is on its way in, to be labeled and secured in Evidence Holding. Abby will get the monitor itself delivered directly to her lab, DiNozzo's compiling the information on the Lt. Commander, Ziva's tracking down his NCIS Agent daughter Karen, Michelle is in the Conference Room with Anne Wetzel, he's going through a list of numbers trying to track down Mrs. Wetzel and he's not hearing anything.

"DiNozzo," he calls, deciding he has to get them moving if they won't move themselves.

"Lieutenant Commander William Wetzel," DiNozzo replies crisply and uses the plasma screen remote to bring up a formal portrait and page one Service Record, "enlisted 1981 and currently Second Officer aboard the Aircraft Carrier USS Ronald Reagan, CG-61.

"He's married to the former Ruth Walls, they have two daughters: Anne 24 and Karen 20. They live in Colonial Height southeast of Norfolk. She's a Credit Administrator with JPMorgan Chase, Anne is a Commercial Artist with Land, Fenimore and Cooper and daughter Karen is an NCIS agent though the Navy Personnel record has her as a student at GWU - that was three years ago which is apparently the last time that record was updated."

Gibbs doesn't think much of whoever it was whose job is to keep records. From College through FLETC through Appointment as a Federal Agent, he'll see that someone gets a head slap over this - later.

x

"William Wetzel was assigned to the Reagan as a Lieutenant seven years ago," DiNozzo continues. "Nothing in his record shows any problems, nothing here I can find to hint why he'd be dead with his heart monitor turned off."

"The monitor was turned off," McGee cuts in, "at 0113 hours. Up to then, nothing notable in the readouts."

"And the daughter, Anne, found the Lieutenant Commander dead at 'about six o'clock'," Ziva reminds them.

"What about the Security cameras?"

"I, er," McGee clears his throat, "haven't gotten to them yet." He looks into Gibbs' glare, it's like looking into the maelstrom of oblivion. "It's been _ten minutes_."

"Don't work harder, work smarter. Ziva, what about the other daughter, Karen?"

"Nothing." This is enough to halt everyone for a moment. "I have checked our database, there is no record of a Special Agent Karen Wetzel anywhere in NCIS."

"Could the sister have gotten it wrong?" DiNozzo wonders. It doesn't sound likely, Gibbs would've made sure of the name, and even if she were married the search would've included next-of-kin.

"Expand the search to all other Federal Law Enforcement Agencies."

The answer isn't long in coming. "Nothing," Ziva announces. "There is no record of any NCIS Agent Wetzel, nor anyone related by first level relation to a Wetzel."

"Are you sure the sister didn't mean CGIS?" Tony asks.

Gibbs decides it's too far to walk for a head slap. He'll deliver it later.

xxx

Karen Wetzel, only 20 when she came to so cruel an end on an NCIS Covert Assignment, slowly opens her eyes, sorry to see that the Divine Light that'd been forcing through her closed eyelids comes from a plain ceiling light shining down upon her; that the Celestial Music has ceased for her; that Heaven is only a long white hallway and the man towering above her head, his face upside down to hers, is definitely not God.

She supposes she's been turned over, she remembers being murdered face down, her murderer riding her back as he strangled her. She brushes the strands of black hair that'd been dislodged from the white band in her struggle.

"Special Agent Wetzel," STO Kirby's grim voice growls with heavy irony targeted at the title, "why are you dead?"

"Senior Training Officer," she croaks, "I–"

"That's _not _an answer. _Why _are you dead?"

"I..." It's hard to rasp through half-crushed throat, the best she can manage is a whisper. She wishes the music were back. Is it too late to go to heaven? "Don't know, sir."

"Could it be that you were _murdered _by your partner?"

It hurts to nod, hurts worse to whisper "yes."

"Get up." He doesn't help and she'd rather lay on the floor than face the tall man. When she stands, swallows against the pain in her throat, she realizes she can't hear anything in the foyer downstairs. The tray and spilled food still litter the carpet but the Reception is over and she's–

"How'd you fuck up, Wetzel?"

"I…." She can't think of anything that doesn't sound like an excuse. "I studied the Mission Outline–"

"You were woken up last night and had _six hours_ to study it, when an Agent sometimes gets twenty minutes, if she's lucky, before she hits the field. You accessed details on the building, the Caterer and his staff, the flash drive, the files you needed to download - everything except your partner."

"You said he was S.K., that he could be trusted."

"Who the _Hell _am _I _to tell you who you should and shouldn't trust?"

"You're my Senior Training–"

"I don't _exist _in this Operation!" His explosion virtually knocks her back. "You took _my _word instead of checking out a man you've never seen before and now everything you downloaded is in the hands of who-knows-who! What the hell even makes you think he was South Korean?"

She tries to force an answer out, but her voice is turned off.

x

"Had you _checked_, you'd have found he was living well above his means when you compared his possessions, like that Aston Martin, against his salary. You'd have found how much time he spends in the company of North Vietnamese since he _is _Vietnamese. We didn't even _try _to disguise his background because you're without a team to back you up, yet you swallowed the very first lie I told you."

"Yes, sir." She can't raise it above a meek mutter.

"You _asked _for this scenario because you said you wanted to showcase how good you _thought _you were in Undercover work, hoping you could make Henrietta Lange's team in L.A.'s Office of Special Projects. Well, let me read your Mission Debriefing after you meet with the Review Board, then we'll talk again."

"Yes, sir."

x

He turns away and every step of this operation flashes through Karen's mind. "Mister Kirby?"

He'd almost reached the stairs, turns back. "What?"

The word comes from eternity.

"I got in, got through the challenge in the kitchen, made it to the room, downloaded the data; that has to count for _something_."

The words hang. He won't fill the void.

"What grade do I get?"

"What the hell do you care about a grade? You're dead."

xxx

"DiNozzo, who's the SAA aboard the Reagan?"

It takes the man only seconds to call up the information that that worthy is "Special Agent Sasha Nevelle."

"Get her down here. McGee, what've you got on that heart machine?"

"Nothing after one o'clock. There was no buffered data, no software glitch, the machine was simply turned off and there was nothing to record."

Gibbs will ask Abby, but if all the killer had to do was throw a thin switch he doesn't hold out much hope. He could call her now, he could press Ducky, he could report what they have so far to Shepherd - or he could just bide his time until one of his team has something to report.

He hates biding his time.

xx

"Boss?" DiNozzo calls as he hangs up his phone. "I just spoke to the COB aboard the Reagan, Special Agent Afloat Sasha Nevelle is already here. She's come in to report to the Director for the regular 'After Tour' debriefing."

"That was supposed to be yesterday." Regulations require the SAA to make her report on the mission as soon as possible.

DiNozzo doesn't quite shrug. "The Director said today."

Gibbs immediately leaves his desk and the bullpen, climbs the stairs and crosses the upper platform without casting a word back.

"I knew that'd happen," DiNozzo declares and returns to his investigation.

xx

Cynthia Sumner doesn't have time to protest; Gibbs passes her desk too quickly for the woman to get her words out.

When Gibbs pushes open the inner door he's hit with a wash of outrage. "Jethro, your bursting in on meetings is getting really tiring. Whatever it is, it can wait until I'm done."

"No it can't." He turns to the woman seated across from Shepherd, a reasonably comely blonde with a figure perhaps too challenging to six thousand men at sea for eleven months. "You're SAA aboard the Reagan?"

"Yes," Sasha Nevelle answers, somewhat uncertain about this stranger's intensity.

"Your Second Officer's been murdered."

x

As a 'nice to meet you', the greeting leaves much to be desired and also leaves Nevelle speechless.

Even more outraged than when her Deputy SAIC had burst into the room, Shepherd forces control upon the scene and, in characteristically brief outline, Gibbs brings the seated women up to date on the Investigation and concludes with "how much can you tell us about Wetzel?"

"Well," Nevelle has compensated for the fact that a standard homecoming and 'end-of-tour' briefing has gone totally to hell inside of three minutes, "a good officer, no troubles, generally liked and respected by the crew–"

"Except?"

"I beg your pardon?" Nevelle hadn't expected to be interrupted, and derailed, for the second time since meeting this man.

"The Reagan has a crew of over 6,000. Not everyone's that popular."

"Well, I'd have to consult my records."

"You do that."

"Jethro."

"The Reagan's in port barely long enough for its engines to cool and a man's dead, a man who'd normally be home with his family except that a sudden illness put him in the hospital and _that's _where he was taken out. Not even his friends and neighbors knew he'd be there."

"Does sound damned peculiar," Shepherd admits. She'll discuss not being brought into the loop when she and Gibbs are alone.

"Ya think?"

She's never cared for this tone and his use of it before a subordinate is even more galling. Maybe she won't withhold the reprimand for privacy.

"When did you find out Wetzel was sick?" Gibbs asks Nevelle.

"Only this morning before coming here. Kidney stones aren't an NCIS issue," her tone and expression both harden, "but since he was dead before I left the ship I don't appreciate finding out this late."

Gibbs hadn't intended to question if Nevelle was doing her job adequately, but he appreciates her outrage. More balls are being dropped on this case than at Little League tryouts.

"We'll need everything you have on Wetzel."

"That will be all, Agent Nevelle."

"Yes, Director."

"Jethro, a word."


	6. Sign Out

Chapter Six  
Sign Out

"Abby, what've you got?" Gibbs asks over the rapid beeps over the scientist's main door. She's slumped over her evidence bag covered table, his voice makes her stand bolt upright and clutch her ears and head with a heartfelt moan. He can hardly miss the silence that stuffs the room, her raucous and occasionally nerve-stunning music is absent.

She teeters on her high black and red boots, clutches her head in both hands as though to prevent it from breaking off.

"A nine alarm hangover and _please _stop screaming."

For anyone else he might project more firmly, suitable penalty for showing up to work in this condition, but he halves his voice. "What happened?"

She still winces, he repeats the question in Sign, his hands describing a pattern in the air, to which she gestures: **Sammy and I went to Starbase 86 and challenged each other to see who could handle the most Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters.**

He remembers that lethal brew from when Abby had introduced Reverend O'Mallory to the venue during the hunt for John DeKalb. She'd related the description from the one who concocted the noxious beverage as having your brain bashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped around a gold brick.

O'Mallory had taken one sip and passed her glass to Sciuto who'd polished off both in an unconscionable bout. He'd reprimand her for going back there, this time with another probably unsuspecting victim, if he weren't fascinated. He'd never imagined it was possible to slur Sign. **Who won?**

**The Vulcan at the bar.**

**_Why_,** he gestures, half exasperated. Didn't she learn her lesson last time? **would you do that?**

**Because, Gibbs, it was an errand of mercy.**

**How are Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters,** he almost sprains his left wrist signing that, **an errand of mercy?**

**Because when I got home last evening Sammy was totally bummed out, and you've never seen bummed out until you've seen her depressed.**

He supposes not. Sammy Sky's normal manner is best described as ecstasy on steroids, and occasionally she'll take a break and come down to deliriously happy. **What happened?**

**A few days ago one of her friends, Paula Massey, girl we knew from Sodom and Gomorrah, got seriously gay bashed. She never saw it coming, never even saw him, but the guy beat her until she was three-quarters dead, then robbed her. Paula didn't wake up for four days, she's in ICU at GWU Hospital.**

**But alive.** He has no tolerance for people who abuse women, but to give in and show how he feels wouldn't help.

**Yeah. When she found out Sammy was up to a million, it took a while to bring her down, but the gargle blasters did it. When I left her this morning she couldn't even roll off the couch.**

**Surprised you made it in and out of your coffin.**

**What makes you think I made it that far?**

He no longer wants to pursue this and returns to his original question.

**You're really, really early. I don't have the heart machine or the other stuff in the room yet but I do have blood and all sorts of other specimens, and they're all on their way to giving me some answers. I'll have them for you before you can Sign **supercalifragilistic expialidocious.**

Though she just did, he doesn't intend to try.

xxx

Special Agent Trainee Karen Wetzel - Deceased - pushes open her dorm room door, wondering that no one has replaced her single bed with a coffin. It'd be the highlight of her day, perfectly in keeping with the dismal early afternoon. The Board has just used a dull and rusty dagger to scrape every bit of flesh off her skeleton.

They'd started by ripping long strips of skin from her over her preparedness for this _self-selected_ mission, then they'd carved huge chunks of meat from her for every tiny mistake she'd made. For an hour and a half they'd torn out her organs and crushed them under foot, scooped great globs of marrow from her bones, used a bent fork to scrape her brain from her skull and, as it'd neared the second hour, they'd told her to go to her room and await their evaluation.

Every defense she'd raised had been brushed aside, every assertion that she'd done well was dismissed, and every explanation of her tactics, plans and technique was decimated. Her most vigorous defenses were negated, not cruelly or viciously but with dispassionate logic and mind-searing explanations of what she _should _have done.

In the end, she's been exposed - to herself - as the utter failure she'd never have admitted she could ever be.

x

Now she's been sent to her room; a bed flanked by two night tables and lamps, a brown dresser, an off-brown bureau and a tiny bath - and she'd give in to the urge to cry but Federal Agents, particularly fledgling agents, do not cry.

Life in the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center had been good. Her grades were great, she loved the work and her training colleagues - and now in one day... what happened? She'd chosen from among a number of testing scenarios - actually surprised that she could - and despite how much she'd thought she'd trained, she so totally fucked up that she'd died and then morticians had scoured her to the bone and beyond.

'Well, if I'm out on my ass, I may as well start packing. This way, when they pink-slip me I can just–'

The knocks on the door aren't exactly the knell of doom, nor are they the sonorous booms from the Munsters, but to her they sound final enough. When she opens the door Mark Zito, FLETC's Senior Administrator, essentially the Dean of the multi-faceted training facility, looks like every Funeral Director she's ever seen, blue suit notwithstanding.

"Karen–"

"I'm expelled, aren't I?"

"What? No. But I'm sorry, you need to leave immediately for NCIS Headquarters, DC," he says to her probably wide-eyed surprise. Not expelled, just get out. No, not 'get out', sent to the bosses. What? "They're sending a flight to Brunswick Golden Isles; you'll fly into Reagan and meet directly with the Deputy Special Agent-in-Charge L. J. Gibbs."

Her train to failure just derailed, her jet just hit a mountain, her spaceship just collided with an asteroid, her TARDIS just crashed within the Temporal vortex. Zito's so grim and she's being summoned to meet with one of NCIS' top men? "What?"

"I'm sorry, Karen, it's your father. He's dead."

xxx

When Gibbs returns to the bullpen Ziva announces "I have located Karen Wetzel, and despite her sister's premature claim she is not an NCIS Agent - yet."

The woman's tone is enough of the necessary clue. "FLETC?"

"She is a potential NCIS Agent, dependent of course on how well she completes her training. I have contacted the Center Administrator, a Mr. Zito, and also dispatched a Navy plane to bring her to Ronald Reagan Airport."

"Well done." As this was accomplished in the time he was with Shepherd and the hung-over Abby, he'll be generous with compliments. He turns to McGee. "What've you accomplished?"

"The check on the monitor, the internal log reports everything normal, no sign of distress from Wetzel. It was turned off at 0113."

"That seems to let off the daughter."

"Think so, DiNozzo?" Gibbs doesn't care about alibis, he wants answers. He's not going to rule out Anne Wetzel until he has confirmation of where she was at 1:13. "What do you have?"

"I found Mrs. Wetzel by her cell in California Maryland," DiNozzo reports. "She's on her way in."

"All three Wetzels here," Gibbs says and continues to his desk. "Hope we'll have something to tell them."

xx

In the Conference Room, Michelle Palmer strains to keep her patience with the blonde woman across the table. She wouldn't describe Anne Wetzel's emotions as a roller coaster, more like a ride through a quarry in a car with square stone wheels during an earthquake. Wetzel's visibly deteriorated in just the short time that she's been here. Her face is drawn, her shoulders hunched and she looks much older than her 23 years as she presses her new engagement ring between right thumb and forefinger.

"I can't believe he's gone," she tells her ring. "He... he was supposed... in and out, a 'simple procedure' they said. He's done it before."

"Miss Wetzel, could you please focus?" Michelle tries not to sigh the appeal. Exasperation does little for an investigation but in 38 minutes they haven't gotten far. She glances at her watch, tries to make the look discrete, but they're closing on 39.

"I _am_ focused," Wetzel growls. "You want me to tell you my father's enemies. Well I can't. I don't know any."

Michelle tries to pull away from her own frustration. It's not Wetzel's fault that Jimmy's driving her up a wall, but she's not helping either.

xxx

"I'm sorry, Doctor," Jimmy Palmer says for what seems the ninth time.

"If I were looking for apologies or even contrition," the older man says, "I would've accepted the same quite some time ago. Lieutenant Commander Wetzel has been waiting as long as I for your belated arrival," the older man says over the open torso of the deceased.

"No he hasn't."

This open challenge in his Deputy's tone is enough to pull Ducky short. "I beg your pardon."

"The man's dead, and while I'm sorry about that and I'll help you find out why of course, the fact is he's dead and he's not waiting on anything."

"Whereas you, Doctor–"

"Whereas I have– Oh, what's the use?" Ducky already knows what he's going through, they've been discussing it for most of the year and discussing it now, while they're both so far out of sorts is only going to hurt.

"The use, Doctor, is that–"

"_Don't call me that_."

This brings Mallard to a full halt. "I beg your pardon?"

"Even when you used to call me 'Mister Palmer' you used my name. Now when you call me 'doctor' it feels so... distant."

"And what would you suggest?"

"Call me Jimmy. And I should call you Ducky rather than 'Doctor' after all we're equals I mean I'm not equal to you I'm still an ME-trainee but I'm not the kid I was when I first got here all those years ago I'm an adult and an MD and while I haven't got much time at it we're not as distant as we were and I feel that we should change."

Ducky stares at him for a long moment, a very long moment, then he smiles. "And high time too. I've been wondering when you would get around to it."

Jimmy's surprised. This was so much easier than he'd feared it would be when he wound himself up for that catharsis that he can't get back on track, isn't sure what emotion he should be feeling or expressing. He still feels like he's worn out all his emotions this morning, that they and he should take a vacation.

"So, Jimmy, shall we see what ails the good Commander?"

Jimmy smiles too, relieved that he can abandon the drive that gave voice to such frustration. "Yes, Doctor."

The look the men exchange speaks more than volumes.

x

"What, then, do you make of his condition?" Ducky asks, returning to business - and to teaching. Wetzel's ribs, heart and lungs have already been removed and are ready for sectioning and analysis.

"Well, I saw no indication of distress. The x-ray shows his left kidney has stones, he must have been in considerable pain."

"He was brought from the USS Ronald Reagan via ambulance within minutes of its docking at Norfolk."

"Quite a trip into Monroe."

"Indeed it is, my boy - Jimmy. Indeed it is."

Using first a scalpel and then forceps, Jimmy removes each stone from the dissected kidney and sets each into a separate Petri dish. "So, you all packed and ready for Scotland?" Ducky's eyes ask the question. "Sorry, I've been practicing the art of digression."

"Practice harder."

"I will."

"Yes, Scotland awaits. Jordan and I will spend two weeks, and I am truly looking forward to getting away."

"Been too long since your last vacation."

"Far too long. Pity I can't allow you to solo, however."

"I know. But I'm looking forward to it."

"To my absence?"

Jimmy almost protests in profound embarrassment before he sees the humor in Ducky's eyes. "To your replacement," he says more definitively, playing up the moment instead.

"Well, that is not for two weeks yet. In the meantime, you have _work _to do."

"Starting with those stones."

"Indeed. To–"

"'Abby, please'."

xxx

An hour after his rapid-fire consultations, Gibbs turns at the perception of movement at the bullpen entrance, sees an escorting Agent near DiNozzo's desk with a woman that the last few hours haven't been kind to. Middle aged, blonde, her left hand wrapped in a strip of white gauze, her eyes scream her distress so loudly so she doesn't notice DiNozzo stand up to receive her.

"Mrs. Wetzel?" Tony presumes. She starts as though he'd appeared beside her.

"I'm Ruth Wetzel. And you are?"

By the time he introduces himself Gibbs has reached them and he completes the introductions.

"We're sorry for your loss, Ma'am," Gibbs says in his best condolence voice.

"What happened?"

"We're not entirely sure," His tone is a very familiar one to his team. '_Find out_.' "Your daughter Anne is here with one of my agents, your other daughter is flying in from Georgia into Reagan airport, a team will meet her and drive her in."

"Can I see Anne now?"

Normally he'd prefer to wait, to interview the widow alone, but this case has so few clues he decides it's better to let mother and daughter see one another and glean information from their unrestrained and quite probably emotionally charged first few minutes together.

"Right this way."

But before he can take more than a step his desk phone rings. "Excuse me." He returns to the desk and answers with his usual brevity, but the whisper is nearly too low to recognize as Abby's.

/I got the results of the blood test./

"What did it?" Clatter, bang, thunk ... scrape.

/Darn it, Gibbs, if you're going to scream at me I'm going home./

He does something he'd never consider doing for anyone else in her condition; he whispers, mindful not only of Abby but of the widow a few feet behind him. "What killed him?"


	7. Whittling Down

Chapter Seven  
Whittling Down

Tony, standing beside a distressed Ruth Wetzel, watches Gibbs say "Be right down" softly enough to make it clear he's keeping secrets from the widow, hang up his phone and turn to them.

Years of practice lets him read the boss' face quite clearly. Gibbs can't be in two places at once and wants to hear equally from Ruth Wetzel and the scientist. "DiNozzo, go down and get Abby's report."

"On it, boss." He's well aware of how Abby, having 'sent for' Gibbs to give him whatever information she's uncovered, will feel about the substitution, but he doesn't comment in the blonde woman's presence. Instead he watches Gibbs instruct McGee to find a suspect on the Hospital Security surveillance tapes and depart for the Conference Room with Wetzel. The Probette already has daughter Anne there. Ruth Wetzel looks like she's a violin string played for too long.

Deciding he'd far prefer to spend the time with even a disappointed Abby, he heads for the elevator and takes it down to the inaptly named ground floor. In the rear of the building it would be more appropriately named the 'half-below-ground' floor, sidewalk and bushes visible from the lab's high windows. But this has always seemed an appropriate venue for a Goth who spends her nights - shouldn't it be days? - in a specialty coffin.

xx

When he enters the lab he doesn't see her or hear her almost perennial music, so he calls loudly "HEY ABS, WHERE ARE YOU?"

"_OW_!" Her cry comes instantly from the far left corner behind him and when he turns she's clutching her ears. She slowly eases from a stiff pained stance and gives him a seething glare. "What are you trying to do, _kill _me? Rip my head off?"

"What's wrong?" Her wince gives him the answer. He's suffered from the same malady after too many frat parties. "Hung over?"

She give him the glare only a Sciuto can manage. "No, Tony, I always writhe in pain when you talk."

"Wait, if you're–" her wince advises him to lower his voice. "If you're hung over, why didn't you take anything for it?" There are ancient and also 'over-the-counter' remedies and he knows she'll have a concoction infinitely better than those.

"I _did_, Tony, that's why it's only at atomic blast level and not super-nova. Even my cures take time."

That's pretty impressive; he very rarely gets beyond the jackhammer stage. "What did you drink?"

"Six Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters." He whistles before realizing what a terrible mistake that is; she clutches her head to keep it from shattering. "When I can let go," she seethes, "I'm going to kill you."

x

"I have a better idea; tell me what killed Lieutenant Commander Wetzel and I'm outta here."

"Rocuronium."

"Rock you who eum?"

She's evidently thinking of how long this conversation is going to be. For the past month she's made it clear he's not her favorite agent and this isn't helping their relationship. Of course, since the incident about the rumor of Reverend and Probie McGee's supposed baby, he's not on too many agents' favorites lists.

"Rocuronium. It was introduced in 1994, has rapid onset and intermediate duration of action. His body was full of it, and I found traces of it in his hydrating tube and _way _too much still in the saline bag."

"What is it?"

She sighs explosively. "Rocuronium, for those who skipped basic Chemistry for the life of the college jock–"

"Ouch."

"You haven't felt ouch yet, is an aminosteroid, non-depolarizing - that means it doesn't stimulate muscles before weakening them - neuromuscular blocker or muscle relaxant used in anesthesia to facilitate endotracheal intubation - for the layman that's when they stick a tube up your nose to help you breathe - and to provide skeletal muscle relaxation during surgery or mechanical ventilation. The formula's simple: [3-hydroxy-10,13-dimethyl-2-morpholin-4-yl-16-(1-prop-2-enyl-2,3,4,5-tetrahydropyrrol-1yl)-2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,11, 12,14,15,16,17-tetradecahydro-1H-cyclopenta[a]phenanthren-17-yl] acetate."

x

If that's simple, he doesn't want complex. He raises his hands. "Abby, I swear I'll fund you a year's supply of 'Caf-Pow!' if you'll just have mercy." She takes a long moment. "Well?"

"I'm thinking it over." Inevitably she appears to decide to show him a little bit of mercy. "It's an intravenous neuromuscular blocker or muscle relaxant. They use it in anesthesia for, as I said, endotracheal intubation. The body's normal reflex is to reject things like breathing tubes stuck down the throat, this makes sure the choking or gag response is cut off."

"So why'd it kill him?"

"_Because_, Tony, it wasn't used in an operation with a trained medical woman standing there monitoring. A whopping big load was dumped into his system and it relaxed and stopped his muscles; muscles like heart, diaphragm, everything. He was awake - you saw his face - but he couldn't move, couldn't cry out, couldn't breathe. He probably stared up into the face of his murderer and this highly trained Seaman couldn't do a thing about it except lay there and suffocate until his heart relaxed and went limp."

"How long does it last?"

"Forget it. It has a half-life of 60 to 80 minutes."

Wetzel had a life of about four-and-a-half, maybe five minutes and just laying there watching himself be murdered as his lungs and heart shut down isn't something DiNozzo wants to contemplate. "This Rocuronium, is it easy to get hold of?"

"In a hospital? They'd have it by the gallon. It's marketed as 'Zemuron' in the United States and 'Esmeron' in most other countries."

DiNozzo decides it probably doesn't come in gallon containers but he now has a justifiable reason to call Jeanne. She'll be able to tell him the most likely way someone could get a hold of Monroe University Hospital's best.

x

"Is there any cure?"

"You mean 'is there any _antidote_?'"

"Abby, are you going to bite me for the rest of my life?"

"Yes. Sugammadex. It's a selective relaxant binding agent, a modified γ-cyclodextrin, with a lipophilic core and a hydrophilic periphery." She obviously doesn't feel merciful yet. "The rocuronium molecule, which is a modified steroid, is bound within sugammadex's lipophilic core and rendered unavailable to bind to the acetylcholine receptor at the neuromuscular junction."

"Well, of course. Everybody knows that."

"Well, if everybody knows it, why are you down here bothering me?"

That's enough. "All right. Look Abby, why don't you just slap me and get it over with? Get it out of your system once and for all."

"I'm whittling you down to where a slap will be good enough."

xxx

The first minutes of Ruth and Anne Wetzel's reunion are as chaotic and emotional as Gibbs expected, but he and Michelle Palmer watch and listen to the women in the Conference Room, seeking underlying answers in the emotional maelstrom. His Rule 46, never touch a crying woman, is doubly enforced; it takes two minutes before the pair is aware of anything other than their own misery.

Much of what the agents hear they already know, though the notable absence of new-fiancé Frank again comes to the fore. Last night the man proposed marriage, that was what led Anne to be at the hospital so early this morning to find the Commander's body, but though he'd long since been informed of the tragedy which has stricken his future wife and in-laws, he's been conspicuous by his absence.

"Mrs. Wetzel," Gibbs begins when the women have exhausted this portion of grief and he gets them seated across from himself at the conference table, Palmer to his left acting as Secretary/Stenographer, "how would you describe your husband?"

"I'm... not quite sure what you mean."

He doesn't want to lead her. "How would you describe him?"

"Well, he was patient... caring..."

"Caring," Anne seconds.

"We didn't see - really see very much of him in recent years," Ruth concludes. "He'd be home for a month and then gone for a year at a time. This time was eleven months. Deployments are a bitch on marriage."

Gibbs recalls what he walked into once during a surprise return home. "How did you cope?"

"The Wives' Circle. There's a lot of us in and around Norfolk, many more keep in touch by email, phone and so forth throughout the country. Captain Clausen's wife Valerie is our Coordinator, she keeps people communicating even when sometimes they don't want to. It's funny how sometimes you can want to break away from shared loneliness, as though that could make you forget an empty be– house."

"And now that the Reagan is in port?"

"_They have their husbands back and I'm burying mine_."

x

"I wish to God Frank were here," Anne mutters, staring at her hands upon the table, at one hand.

"Frank?" Gibbs asks as though he hadn't already gleaned the answer in the tempest of the women's reunion.

"The hell with him," Ruth says, causing Anne to break her contact with the ring and fire:

"_Mother_!"

"No good son of a bitch. Where is he?"

"He'll come."

"No he won't. Not a decent bone in his body. Your father detested him, he'd never have permitted you to marry that bastard but you just had to go and do it and then to go to the hospital to show him. You'd probably have given your father a heart attack if he weren't already dead."

"I did it because I thought he'd come around if he knew how much we love each other!"

"_Love_."

"Yes LOVE! Frank and I. And dad barely knew him, would've understood. But you poisoned him against him."

"Didn't need any poisoning, he did that already himself, no good shiftless bum."

"Can a bum afford a rock like this?" Anne demands, stabbing out her hand.

"Probably stole it."

"Don't you dare! He loves me."

"If he loves you, where the hell is he?"

"Where is he?" Gibbs cuts in. "We can send transportation." Nothing is further from his mind. This Frank will go to one of the more private 'conference rooms' downstairs.

"Frank Norton, 1328 Montana Avenue NE."

Gibbs glances at Michelle. She hardly needs to be a notably psychic witch to read 'DiNozzo and David, send them now' in his eyes, but she leaves the table as though sorry to miss the rest of this soap opera.

x

When Palmer is gone, leaving her notepad behind, Gibbs decides he needs to bear down. Granted they've suffered a terrible loss, but the women have to focus if he and his team are to solve this mystery.

"Did your husband," he asks Ruth, "ever indicate he was having problems with anyone aboard the Reagan?" For someone aboard the Aircraft Carrier to harm Wetzel at sea would be incredibly foolish, to do so on land while surrounded by uncounted numbers of people is more likely. Conversely, for any stranger to kill a Naval Officer at one thirteen, barely 12 hours after his ship docked, well, how would the stranger know?

No, while there's always room for error, it is more likely the plot to do away with Wetzel was hatched upon the Reagan.

But he won't draw any conclusions. The family knew where Lt. Commander Wetzel was, and now he wants to talk to Frank Norton.

"No," Ruth says, unaware of his considerations, "he told me nothing about any problems. I knew the ship was coming into Norfolk yesterday, but his having to go to the hospital, it caught me surprise.

"Where were you today?"

"My damned boss," anger competes with frustration to get out of her mouth faster, "he didn't care Bill was coming in yesterday, he sent me to another branch all the way in Chesterbrook. I had to stay for an early morning meeting that was totally useless, it could've been handled on a Conference call, then I got tied up driving back. I got the call about Bill from your agent on the way in when the office opened and someone could give him my cell number."

"When was the last time you heard from your husband?"

"I spoke to him three days ago, he confirmed when the ship was to be in. I was to meet him in Norfolk, at the docks, which is why I was so pissed."

xxx

Ziva isn't pleased to have a late afternoon stakeout instead of a steak lunch but she has the questionable gratification that Tony has also missed lunch; questionable because he insists on complaining like a yeled about it. There is no place nearby at which to alleviate their hunger and neither of them can agree upon a destination where they may buy food, as they can barely risk being outside the car should Frank Norton come near his home but not remain. Ziva can think of numerous complications, including one of the basketball players in the court almost directly from Norton's residence spotting them and alerting their target.

"While we are waiting, Frank Norton is probably in the Navy Yard," Ziva grouses.

"Well, someone would call us if he does."

Fortunately, they no longer have to wait, for even as Tony speaks a black Trans Am stops before the two story home, reverses and backs into the driveway.

"I don't... do my eyes deceive me?" Tony demands, cranking his enthusiasm up to full power. "NO _WAY_!"

"No way to what?" Ziva demands, seeing nothing worthy of anything more than casual interest that a modification has been made to the vehicle, a red light that tracks back and forth just above the front vents.

"KITT!"

"Who?"

DiNozzo gives her that look she hates most, his 'where have you been for thirty years?', the one that usually precedes some ultra-uninteresting bit of cinematic minutia. "Not who. What. KITT - Knight Industries Two Thousand!"

"If you say so. It looks like a car to me, and our witness is getting out and about to go into his home, losing us the chance to–"

"You're right, we'd better go," he's already half out of the car. "I wonder if it has William Daniels interactive."

"I am unlikely to care about interacting with William anybody."

x

A man in his late 20's has gotten out of the car and is waking toward the front door. Tony and Ziva approach yards apart, spaced so they may head off any potential flight. "Frank Norton?" Ziva calls, far to the man's right. He turns toward her and the car, Tony is virtually behind him now. "NCIS, we would like to speak to you."

"What about?" His eyes shift back and forth between the agents and he takes a step back.

"We understand that last night you became engaged to a Ms. Anne Wetzel?"

"Wow. I never thought that'd be a crime."

Tony wonders at this. "Did you know her father died this morning in Monroe University Hospital?" Maybe he doesn't? Good reason for his absence.

"Yes."

Okay, maybe not a good reason. "Well, usually in such situations–"

"Look, Anne's parents don't like me, they've made that _way _clear. Sure I want to go to Anne but I figured with her family there that it wasn't a good idea. I sent her a text message."

"Wait a minute." DiNozzo needs a minute. "Your fiancé's father dies suddenly - she finds the body - and you texted her?"

"Yes. What was I to do?"

Tony doesn't want to answer that. All he wants to do is go back to his government-issue car - forget KITT - put his head down and see if the steering wheel is comfortable on his forehead.

x

"I believe you should see your fiancé," Ziva declares, tries not to put any of what she's feeling _or _thinking into her tone. "We can offer you a ride to the Navy Yard."

"That's all right."

"We insist."

"Am I under arrest?"

Tony's so surprised he almost laughs, falls back on his 'what, are you kidding?' manner. "No, you're not under arrest. It's just easier, this way you can get past the MPs without hassle." 'And Gibbs can sweat the truth out of you,' he keeps from his eyes.

"Okay."

The trio abandons KITT in the driveway, take the plainer black vehicle to the Navy Yard. Tony, admitting he's influenced by the text message, dwells on the possibility that Norton removed an obstacle to his impending wedding.


	8. Far Reaching

Chapter Eight  
Far Reaching

While Tim inspects the Security footage in and around Monroe U. Hospital, Michelle pursues a widening range of interviews. She'd been reluctant to contact the Lt. Commander's CO, but the auxiliary list of family obtained from Naval records is short and too soon only Wetzel's crewmates remain.

She knows Gibbs will want to consult the Aircraft Carrier's Captain directly, but she eventually reaches the point where she must do something or be found by Gibbs doing nothing.

She leaves her desk, says to Tim "I'll be in MTAC" and heads for the stairs. McGee only nods, doesn't shift his eyes from the screen and she's not sure he even heard her. She resists the urge to repeat herself - she hates it when people do that to her - and climbs the steps.

The upper platform is a minefield of doubts and hesitations. Gibbs will be angry that I contacted the CO without him being there. 'He can't be everywhere.' I'm overreaching my authority. 'He gave me the assignment.' I came close to being fired just a few weeks ago. 'That was a different matter.' I should back down and keep to my place. 'My place is an NCIS Special Agent.' Gibbs didn't tell me to contact the CO. 'Supervisory Special Agent Gibbs told me to find Lieutenant Commander Wetzel's killer.' I'm not a senior agent to be taking the initiative, I'm a probette.

She halts, angry, more so because she's not debating with anyone else, she's used that detested epithet on herself.

She glares into the Iris scanner aperture, yanks the door and feels that nanosecond resistance that says she's almost outpaced the computer. She uses that to fuel her resolve as she descends the ramp toward the two men at the control bank on her left, ignores the cards hastily shoved aside. "Open a channel to the Captain of the USS Reagan," she commands, and halts when she interprets the gazes turned toward her. She smiles sheepishly. "Please."

xx

Michelle's resolve held during the opening contact and first round of introductory phrases with Captain Jacob Clausen. She's grateful he's still aboard, expects he's overseeing the details of the Aircraft Carrier's maintenance before taking his own Shore Leave. She can't avoid a pang of regret at having to ruin it.

"Captain Clausen, I'm calling about Lieutenant Commander William Wetzel."

"Yes?"

What to say? How to say it. Special Agent Gibbs always wants to be the one to read eyes and a dozen other things at the reveal, but Special Agent Gibbs isn't here; she's barely-ranked Special Probette Palmer and she's usurped her chief's place. She can't say 'I'll call you back', can't stand staring at the screen like an idiot, but how to say it? How to balance what Deputy Special Agent-in-Charge Gibbs would reveal or withhold when she's not Deputy Special Agent-in-Charge, she's a first year Field–

"I'm afraid something's happened. We, that is my boss, Special Agent Gibbs has to see you."

"He'll know where to find me. Is that it?"

"I - unh - that's it. For now!"

"I'll be waiting."

x

Michelle feels the fist clenching her heart relax, so grateful is she when Clausen cuts the circuit. Did he read her fear? He had to, she was projecting it from her face like a searchlight. Abby could've seen it in her lab.

She takes a moment, tries to determine what she's accomplished. Aside from giving up to Clausen that there's a problem with Wetzel, the details of which the Captain will now determine in very short order, she hadn't usurped Special Agent Gibbs' primacy but neither has she gotten any information at all. She'd made an _appointment_, just like a good little Probette / Law Clerk.

xx

The balcony overlooking the Squad Room looks good for throwing herself over, for down below Gibbs is at his desk, alone in the bullpen. Thank the Goddess Agent DiNozzo isn't there for she must go downstairs and confess her screw-up.

It'd all seemed so reasonable when she'd run out of other people to interview.

Nonetheless, she doesn't jump from the not-likely-to-be-fatal balcony - it's not the 43rd floor Jubilee Eastergaard had plummeted from - but she takes the two flights of stairs wishing she could extend them down to hell.

Then she has to approach her boss - and wishes she hadn't chickened out on the leap. "Sir?"

"Don't call me 'sir', Palmer." He doesn't even glance up from the monitor screen between them, he's typing she doesn't know what. "Where've you been?"

"Umm, MTAC, si - Special Age - boss."

"Doing what?" Still he doesn't look above the screen, doesn't change the rhythm of soft clicks upon his keyboard.

"Well, sir, you see, I spoke with all of Lieutenant Commander Wetzel's relatives without finding a lot, there was no one left to talk to outside of his ship." How to say it? How to say it so he won't break their deal and slap her head - or worse?

"Tick tock, Palmer," he says to the screen. She looks back over her shoulder, the large distant clock shows 1544.

She turns, takes a deep and possibly final breath. "Well, I sort of... MTACed the Captain - Captain Jacob Clausen."

x

This does make him look up and she rushes through before he can draw his Sig and shoot her. "I didn't tell him he was dead just that there's a problem and that you need to see him and he'll see you aboard the Reagan."

"No."

The word seems to halt the planet's rotation. She feels her eyes bulge. "No, sir? Special - boss?"

"He'll see _you _on board. Get moving, it's 200 miles each way and I want your report before I leave."

She looks back again, this time the bullpen doesn't seem safely empty, it's deserted. When she faces front, he's still waiting for her to leave. "Alone, sir?"

He glances at the surrounding desks only to drive the point. "You see anyone else here?"

"No, sir. Thank you, sir." She hurries away while she's still breathing, but can't get further than David and DiNozzo's desks before she can't stand it anymore and turns back. "Sir?"

He's returned his attention to whatever's on that screen. "What is it, Palmer?"

"Well, I - err - that is - I thought you'd be mad that I contacted Captain Clausen without per - consulting you."

This time he focuses every bit of his attention on her. "Counting your time on DiNozzo's team, you've been down here as a Field Agent for, what, almost a year?"

"About a year, sir, yes sir."

"You'd be useless if I still had to walk you through every step in an Investigation."

"Yes sir. Thank you sir." She doesn't quite run to the elevator.

xxx

"_But I can help_!" FLETC Trainee Karen Wetzel had rocketed to her feet and leans across the corner of the crowded Conference Room table scant inches from DiNozzo at the head of the table.

"You are helping," Ziva, seated to Tony's left directly across from where the future-Special Agent had been seated, assures her. "The more information you provide us with about your father, the better chance we have of solving this."

Mrs. Ruth and Anne Wetzel, seated to Karen's right along the long end of the table, don't try to cut in. As fiery as each woman had been earlier, as chaotic as the few minutes since the younger daughter's arrival in the Conference Room had been, the mother and sister don't match the intensity of the smaller woman's conflagration.

"But I know a _lot _- that is I've learned a lot - at FLETC. I can help. Let me on this case!"

"If that is the quality of thought coming out of FLETC these days," Ziva says, "then I fear for the future of NCIS."

"_Don't you talk to her like that_!" Anne explodes from the far end of the line.

"I can handle myself, Anne," Karen proclaims, her flame momentarily diverted right.

Tony, who had cringed inside at Ziva's pronouncement, sees Ruth is seconds from igniting. "No matter how highly ranked a Special Agent you were, even if you were the director herself, you can't be assigned to investigate your own father's murder. That's a conflict bigger than, well, bigger than I've ever known. It's not going to happen."

x

After a long moment Karen manages to force herself to sit down, but the four who surround her can see her fire's still not out.

"Have you _any _idea who did this to Bill?" Ruth Wetzel appeals.

Ruth and Anne had been interviewed separately, then together by Gibbs until Karen was reported in the building, having flown into Reagan and brought in by two agents, and then Gibbs decided that he and Ziva, having just returned with Frank Norton, should interview the trio together, that by doing so it might spark some memories. Thus far, memories are the only things that haven't been sparked.

"We're still searching security footage," Tony tells the mother, wishing Gibbs were here instead of being upstairs typing his preliminary report before the Director leaves the building. Gibbs will then monitor their progress from Shepherd's office, but Tony still wishes they could've traded places. He'd rather report to an aggravated director.

"But the only camera," he continues, "that shows your husband's room is too far away to clearly distinguish anyone's face. We're trying to find an intruder." He won't go into the fact that they'd only recently received this footage - probably after Hospital Security reviewed it. Well, he won't blame them, they'll want to solve this murder - if they can - but they don't have NCIS' resources or the agents' training. Even this fiery woman to his right has greater training and could be of some help, if it were permitted.

He and Ziva had been unable to interview Frank Norton, Gibbs will take him on in Interrogation One when the man has had time to marinate. A quick glance at his watch, Tony sees it's nearly 1600 and wonders how late it'll be when Gibbs turns on the flame.

"Well, what _can _you tell us?" Ruth continues her uninterrupted demand. He glances left to Ziva seated alone on her side of the table where she can observe the women straight on, but there's little that hasn't already been covered; a great many questions and far too few answers.

"I'll tell you what, let's try to get a picture of where everybody was last evening, what you were doing and what happened."

"I _told _you where I was," Ruth declares, "stuck for too long at a meeting in Pimmit Hills which never had to have happened for all the difference it made. I never even got to see my husband, his ship came in while I was in Pimmit and I didn't get out of there until morning and I was on the highway when you bastards told me he was dead and it doesn't matter _where _I was, it matters where that fucking bastard who killed my husband was!"

Tony glances to Ziva, tries to convey only with his eyes how long and grueling a session this is going to be.

xxx

When Gibbs opens the small room's door and sets a folder upon the table before him, Frank Norton glares at him. He imagines the man feels slightly put out, he's been pulled away from his home, ostensively to see Anne Wetzel, but he hasn't; he's seen agents, a cinderblock corridor and a barren chamber.

"What the hell is going on?"

"Murder investigation," is all Gibbs says in a voice as dead as Anne's father.

"What has that got to do with me?"

"Maybe nothing, maybe a lot." Gibbs has heard about the young man's rather outdated styling of his car. He makes no judgment about that, but it does raise questions about the use of his money and his interpretation of frivolous. "You got engaged last night to Anne Wetzel, her parents are against the relationship and the mother doesn't like the news of the engagement. Now this morning the father's dead and you were curiously absent."

"Wait a - wait a minute. Are you saying I killed Bill Wetzel because he didn't approve of me marrying his daughter?"

Gibbs wishes he hadn't known weirder. "Did you?"

"Man, you are _sick_. I didn't even know her dad was in town."

"You didn't?"

"Believe it or not, Agent..."

"Gibbs."

"When I was proposing to Anne, the subject of her father never even came up. Believe it or not, we were focused on other things."

Gibbs doesn't answer.

x

"Listen, so he doesn't like me - so _what_? Won't be the first time someone didn't. He'd have come around, and even if he didn't it's no skin off my nose. I wasn't marrying him - or Anne's mother for that matter. They're her parents and if they never spoke to me that'd be just fine. I don't give a damn. I love Anne and I'm marrying her. If they don't like it, too bad."

"You say you love Anne. Where were you today?"

"I was letting her family have some time. I knew if I walked in her mom would go ballistic. She didn't need that. So I kept my distance, kept in touch by phone, let them grieve."

"You didn't try to see her?"

"I wanted to be there. Hell, someone shoots or stabs or whatever my dad, I'd want her close but my folks have nothing against this wedding. But no, I didn't shoot or stab or anything else Bill Wetzel."

x

Interesting. "Did Anne Wetzel tell you how her father died?"

"No. Yes."

More interesting. "Which is it?"

"She told me he died in the hospital, but not because of the operation. That was supposed to be today."

"How do you think he died?"

"I don't know. I heard he had stones, I don't know what happened."

Gibbs had had his team withhold everything, give only evasive answers when they brought the man in. They know how Wetzel died, but they don't know by whose hand or why.


	9. Acht Ball

Chapter Nine  
Acht Ball

"Abby," Gibbs calls before he's past the main door of her lab. Her nerve-battering music which drowns the rapid series of tones above his head is testimony enough that she's recovered from the morning's hangover. He hopes she's learned her lesson and looks forward to learning some answers. He heads directly to her radio, turns down the noise to a tolerable volume, is unfazed by her silent glare.

It's after 1700 but she keeps the same hours he does and the first question that comes to mind is why she's changed into spiked dog collar and matching wrist straps that don't quite go with a too short black skirt or too tight black tee shirt adorned with a too-stylized gold glitter cross tilted 60 degrees left and so huge it doesn't entirely fit on the shirt.

The only sane aspect of this outfit, if the word can be stretched to near breaking, are her black and red too-high boots that leave her in danger of toppling like a black and gold tree should she turn too quickly.

"Before you ask," she says, his liberty with her radio forgotten in the pleasure of imparting another forensic revelation, "I've had the tests back for a while and Rocuronium is definitely your culprit. Even the sleeping pill, you'd need way more than they gave to do him in, maybe because he had a morning surgery. You know, it's sad, he'd've been getting geared up to go home in the morning, if they'd been able to do the sonic treatment."

The intent had been to use sound to blast the stones into rubble, granules that would pass painlessly through the urinary tract. As it turned out, Ducky removed them from Wetzel's corpse.

Abby will analyze them to determine if they are naturally occurring stones, for the agents greatly dislike the timing of this death. Not even the family had had much prior notice that the man wouldn't return home when his ship docked.

"How much of the stuff did you find?" Gibbs asks, ignoring the woman's attire, something he's had great practice at over the years. The first day he'd met her, her attire had been a shirt of skulls and a black way-too-miniskirt festooned with slave chains; today's is only a marginal improvement.

"Well, here's where I know the perp didn't know what he was doing, because I found _way _too much Rocuronium in the bag alone. There was enough _left _mixed with the saline solution - almost 400 milligrams - to kill him another five times over. Total overkill, if you'll pardon the expression."

"No. How much does it take to kill?"

x

"Rocuronium attacks the voluntary muscles on contact as it spreads throughout the bloodstream. A technician stands by to control the dosage, normally 0.6 to 1.2 milligrams per kilogram of body weight, and administer Sugammadex, the counteragent, when needed." She types fast on her computer keyboard, brings up a graph that means nothing to him.

"The doctors have to be careful that the rock relaxes the muscles they want to relax - so there's no reaction against the breathing tube or anything else - but they don't want to relax the diaphragm _or _the heart as the killer did."

She points at the uninformative spikes and valleys. "Now Lieutenant Commander Wetzel weighed 160 pounds or 73 kilograms, so an appropriate dosage would range from 44 to 88 milligrams. The typical 10 milliliter vial contains 100 milligrams, _more _than enough to kill someone if they're left unattended. Your guy must have used five vials worth."

Now comes the key question, one that has to be asked though Gibbs considers there's absolutely no point in doing so. "Could it have been a mistake?"

She hops when she turns to him and at this hour he could do with a little less enthuiasm. "Absolutely not," she declares, one scarlet and one black nailed index digits raised to mark her point. He notices now and can do without the alternation.

"Not only is Rocuronium used before surgery, or during if necessary, but like I said just the leftover was total overkill. No way is it anything other than murder."

xxx

"Boss," McGee calls across the bullpen as Gibbs strides in. "You'll want to see this."

Whenever one of his team leads with those words they're invariably right, so Gibbs diverts to see whatever his Forensic Computer Analyst has called up upon his monitor. This time, as he joins the man behind the desk, he sees the long view down the hospital corridor to and past William Wetzel's room. A male figure, too small and too indistinct, is frozen in time, hand on the door.

The hallway is too dim in the hospital's night to see the image distinctly, so he turns toward the plasma screen mounted between this and DiNozzo's workstations. Within two seconds the image is reproduced, vastly enlarged but not much more informative.

It's a black male clothed in a blue hospital smock, the security time stamp reads 0457 and not a lot more can be seen in the barely focused image.

"The heart monitor was turned off at 0113, this is the only man to enter the room prior to that."

"What do you mean 'prior'?" Gibbs demands, a verbal head slap. The time's three minutes to five, four hours after Wetzel died.

"I wasted time looking for a suspect before I realized the time stamp was wrong, and that's because I got to where Anne Wetzel was escorted to the door at 0946. The time is off by three hours, fifty four minutes. Compensating, this is 0103 hours."

Gibbs isn't interested in fixing blame, there's so much of it to go around and it fits so well. He just wants an ID on this bastard.

He doesn't have to direct the man; McGee brings up the facial recognition software on the other monitor at his desk. On one side, a grid measures distances and angles between specific points on the black man's unfocused face, while on the other side a rapidly changing output scans faces that match particular measurements. When all the vectors and lengths match, they'd have their subject - if it were a clear picture.

"Can't you do better?" He's seen the man do better, run pixels over the screen and put the image together like placing pieces on an electronic jigsaw puzzle. "You know, clean up this thing, do your computer dooda with it."

"This _is _the doodad image."

xxx

When Michelle Palmer parks in the huge Norfolk Navy Base as close as she can get to the Aircraft Carrier Ronald Reagan, she tries not to be daunted by its size. The setting sun behind her shines on what reminds her of a skyscraper laid upon its side and only reinforces the impression of too much size. 'No wonder Special Agent DiNozzo used to get lost,' she thinks, but without too much confidence in her own ability to navigate her way through this horizontal high-rise.

She's relieved, however, when upon checking in with the Officer of the Watch who meets her at the head of the gangplank, she finds she's expected and has an escort to the Captain's office.

xx

'Captains always seem to get offices that look like offices,' she thinks as she shakes hands with the tall, tan uniformed skipper. The relation between what this man uses versus his crew's workstations reminds her of Jennifer Shepherd's workplace compared to her own.

"Thank you for seeing me, Captain."

"It's not a courtesy, agent Palmer, not with one of my men dead. You can tell me why," he says as he indicates the chair across the massive desk from his own.

"Not at this point, Captain." 'He's obviously learned a lot in the forever it took me to drive 200 miles.' She won't look at her watch, she already knows its 1910 and dinner's hopeless. "I'm actually here to ask questions."

"Like if Bill Wetzel had any enemies, if he was acting strangely, if he was tense or anything else?"

"We can start with them," Michelle says, reflecting how CSI and similar television shows have changed the flavor of investigations.

x

"No, I can't say I noticed anything out of the ordinary, and since your video call I've thought a great deal about it. Lieutenant Commander Wetzel commanded the Gamma Shift, zero to oh eight, and I've never had a problem with his performance.

"I have, of course, not informed any of the crew - such as are still aboard, that is. We have 6,500 men and women, somewhat less than a third stand the night shift, but a quarter of the crew, naturally, scattered as soon as they could get Leave."

"How long will they be gone?" This is one of the many things she's looked up already.

"We'll be docked for a month, but there's a routine rotation, usually two days and three nights. We can't unman a ship, but the crew'll get rest."

"Commander Wetzel's condition, did you know he had kidney stones?"

"A man can have them for quite a while, the pain comes on suddenly, usually from the stones' moving. First I knew of it, we were a day out when the MO told me Wetzel was laid up. He was given some painkiller and other meds and was brought out as soon as we docked.

"Now I hope you'll forgive me, but I'm a busy man, I've got a lot to do if I hope to see shore. I expect you can get everything you really need from Nevelle."

"I was planning on seeing her next." En route she'd called Special Agent Afloat Sasha Nevelle, who'd already reported to Shepherd earlier today, that she would be aboard and wanted to meet with her. The agent hadn't been happy, she'd already had a session a few hours ago with Gibbs, then as long a drive back to the ship, but Palmer needs to see whatever records Nevelle has in her office.

xxx

Tony picks up his intercom on the first ring, wishing it were the bell that says he can go home but Gibbs is in his 'I'm staying, you're staying until you make progress' mood. He recognizes the voice of David Harris from Security, but he answers his friend formally; they're not at their favorite bar nearest the Yard.

/Tony, my man, I just heard./

"Heard what?" The answer rockets his blood pressure over twenty points. "_No_!" His emphatic outburst turns Gibbs, McGee and Ziva's heads. Let them look. "Listen to me, Dave,_ it's not true_. I screwed up big time. She's not - isn't - never was. That was my fault, I spoke up when I shouldn't have."

/Well it's all over the place. I heard it twice today, both times with your name attached. Finally had to call, it didn't seem likely–/

"It's not. Listen, the thing's bogus. Help me kill it, will you?"

/Will do, my man./

"Gotta run, working on a break."

/Good luck./

"I'll need it." When the line is safely disconnected: "_AARRGGHH_! This is _killing _me. KILLING me!" Now he does have everyone's attention, gets out of his seat because he can't stand to be still anymore. "Prob– Tim, I'm _sorry_. I'm sorry I read your mail, I'm sorry I jumped to the wrong conclusion, sorry I told anyone, I - am - _sorry_. I didn't mean for this to happen, never imagined it'd get out of control like this. I'm sorry it did, I'm sorry Siobhan was hurt, I'm sorry you're mad, I'm sorry Siobhan feels she has to quit as Chaplain - I - AM - _SORRY_!"

"Well, Tony, I'm sorry it happened too." He doesn't sound inclined to mercy, however.

"I'm trying to get ahead of this, to undo it with the truth, but I can't!"

"A rumor is like a Hydra; you're finding that out." The mythical creature is virtually immortal, cut off one head and two grow in its place.

"DiNozzo."

"Yes, boss?"

"Solve it on your own time."

He wants to protest, can't. Gibbs' tone had been clear: 'Sit down and shut up.'

xxx

Michelle appreciates the continued escort to the SAA's office, though she's sure the Seaman is there more to keep her from wandering about digging into things rather than to help her not get lost. There's no reason to worry about her wandering, however; Sasha Nevelle will already have dug into plenty with an insider's view and familiarity; Michelle feels it's better to obtain her report than to do random snooping.

Nevelle's office is two rooms, an outer and an inner and continues the standard motif of too crowded and too cramped with too much steel and other metals. Only the woman's chair and the one she offers are padded, and Michelle suspects there'd been a struggle of wills to get them. The Special Agent Afloat is the Sherriff in this floating community and this one's a woman; two strikes against a harmonious relationship. Unless Nevelle managed to establish her position early, she's either the enemy or the babe.

Michelle is no stranger to being both.

x

"What can you tell me about the Commander?" she asks as she settles into the chair beside the steel desk.

"He didn't ride people any more than most, in this cruise he only put nine people on Report," she places her hand on a short stack of files, "but only one case and Seaman stands out."

"Why is that?"

"Seaman Peter Acht seems on paper, and when I talk to him, to be the kind of person who never seems to manage to keep out of trouble. It's his first tour but he's already racked up three Reprimands."

Michelle's impressed. An official Reprimand is bad but might not be fatal to a career - though three in a short period is very impressive. If he's very lucky he might hold Seaman's rank for the rest of his enlistment, but she won't put any hard earned money on his moving higher. "What happened?"

"The charge was carelessness with equipment, relatively minor except he racked up three of them. Captain Clausen decided to punish him with ten double watches, ten days of sixteen hours on and eight off, and that should've been the end of it. As far as I thought Acht got off easy."

"But that wasn't the end."

"No. Seaman Frank Renaldi bunks with him, they've been tight, so when I got back I questioned Renaldi. Acht didn't act like he'd gotten off easily, in fact he's been nursing a grudge against Wetzel."

"Let me guess; Acht's on leave."

"Since three hours after we docked and the Commander rode out in an ambulance."

"Do you think he did it?"

"Acht's a screw-up, pure and simple, but as far as Clausen and Wetzel were concerned that case was closed. I won't say only a fool would've acted because so far as I'm concerned Acht's a fool."

"Is he a fool with an address?"

"Wish it were that simple. He's from Iowa."

"Got his picture?"

Looking over the image, Michelle doesn't need it spelled out to her; if Peter Acht is guilty he's not coming back, and without roots in DC he's probably holed up somewhere - and she's sure they'll never be lucky enough that it's a Motel Six under his real name.

Nevelle, sensing the conversation's gone as far as it may, slides a short stack of file folders and Michelle reaches for her cell phone.

xx

By the time Gibbs receives Palmer's report he's already sent his team home for the day, so he picks up his phone and presses the code for one of his Beta Shift counterparts, SSA Rosa Arnell.

McGee's recognition system still scans hundreds of faces of arrested or otherwise identified black men and may well yield results by morning, but Gibbs doesn't hold out much hope. The image is so small, distant and blurred the computer might flag a young James Earl Jones. David and DiNozzo are gone, McGee has made one final tweak on his system and left, there remains only himself and -

The phone rings before he can pick it up to call Arnell, he answers with characteristic brevity.

/Jethro,/ Hollis Mann's voice strokes his ear, /doing anything tonight?/

He looks to the Case File shining on his monitor screen and turns it off.


	10. Hudson

Chapter Ten  
Hudson

In Tony DiNozzo's opinion, there's only one thing worse than starting day two of a case at oh seven hundred with no significant progress over yesterday and that's going into oh eight hundred without things improving. To look up from his computer monitor to see Agent-Trainee Karen Wetzel standing before him makes his morning even worse, for he looks around and she's alone.

"What are you doing here?" he asks the young, too-pretty black haired beauty, forcing out the thought that before he'd started his serious re-relationship with Jeanne Benoit that concept didn't exist.

"I came to find out about my father."

x

Tony glances around the bullpen again to be sure it's safe and this time thanks God that, for the moment, they're alone. "There's a new invention, perhaps you've heard of it: it's called a telephone."

"I used it - three times this morning. Special Agent Gibbs isn't answering my messages."

'Probably 'cause he still hasn't figured out voice mail', Tony thinks, but keeps that conclusion to himself. Gibbs makes up for technological illiteracy with the ability to step out of Space-Time Vortexes whenever someone talks about him, particularly when those words are negative. That's why he doesn't ask how the would-be Agent made it past main floor security without an escort or a badge. If she's mastered STVs he doesn't want to know, and if she bluffed her way past Security he doesn't want to be any of them.

"I told you yesterday I can help."

"And I told you yesterday - and I thought it sank in - that you can't. I distinctly remember telling you why."

"Come on, Agent DiNozzo, everyone knows rules are made to be broken."

"Not this one," Gibbs declares as he steps out of the vortex behind Tony bearing his ubiquitous large coffee cup and crosses behind her. "Go home."

"Special Agent Gibbs," she says to his dark blue suited back, "do you have any idea what home is like? Mom and Anne flying off the handle and fighting every minute while demanding that as an NCIS agent I give them the inside information? I went to FLETC so I could join NCIS, have shootouts with International terrorists and mass murderers, duck explosions from IEDs and get some peace."

x

Gibbs halts, not quite around his desk, and waves his hand to Michelle's desk. "Work with Palmer when she comes back from Autopsy, locate Seaman Peter Acht. You have two hours." He'll let the girl develop a possible clue and then send her home, perhaps that much better educated for the practical experience. He sits down and turns his attention to his monitor.

"I'm sorry sir, two hours?"

"School's out, Wetzel. Welcome to the real world."

xx

A half hour later Jennifer Shepherd leads Supervisory Special Agent Melanie Kelman into the sanctum. "How goes the search for Commander Wetzel's killer?"

Gibbs thinks this seems an oddly public place for the woman to ask details of a case's progress, since he'd already informed her that Wetzel's daughter is here helping with a very peripheral aspect of the case, the hunt for a crewman of the Reagan who _might _be connected with it. He'd given the FLETC student the assignment because it's probably a time waster and he doesn't want his team distracted by it. McGee's hunting a far more likely suspect.

He'd already informed Shepherd of their two potential leads, that Sailor and an unknown black man shot out-of-focus in dim light from seventy feet down a hospital corridor so "Fine" is all he'll say while he wonders at Kelman's presence.

His younger counterpart has two notable qualities other than being a protégée of his late partner Martine Joswig. First, the woman is a lightning calculator, perhaps as fast - she might claim faster - than any of McGee's computers; and second, she's twice-gifted (as McGee's wife might say) with an eidetic memory. Gibbs wonders if she's ever forgotten anything, or ever can, and anticipates that's the reason for her presence. Has she seen their quarry?

x

"Special Agent Kelman's team has a murder and assault to solve," Shepherd declares, "but the eight of you are going to work it together."

Eight agents include his team plus Kenneth Templeton and Patrick Larsen and excludes, of course, Karen Wetzel; but his initial annoyance about this high-handed maneuver is quickly negated by the unstated but obvious link. "The Reagan?"

"Machinist's Mate Wilfrid Hudson is dead," Kelman tells them. "He was bludgeoned in what looks like a burglary. His widow M. Lee Hudson is in Howard University Hospital with extensive injuries."

She glances about at the very attentive agents who feel the dynamics of their case reshape themselves by the second. "Dispatch assigned the case to me, I was just about to send my team, but I gave a quick report to Director Shepherd."

"Soon as I heard 'USS Reagan' I decided to put both teams together. One poisoning and one 'burglary gone bad'?"

"DiNozzo," Gibbs directs, "you and David take a shot of that guy from Monroe down there, see if real eyes can recognize him. McGee, you and Palmer with us to Hudson's place. Kelman's team has the lead on this one, we'll assist and put things together."

"What about me?" Karen Wetzel blurts out from beside Palmer, and almost winces under the barrage of glares turned toward her. "'Go home'?"

Gibbs opens his desk drawer to collect his equipment. "Glad to see FLETC students actually learn something."

xxx

Two cars bring the six agents to an apartment house on T Street NW where Gibbs and Kelman take the small elevator to the fourth floor. He wants to finalize the terms of the teams' joint operation, which is that Kelman's team will take this facet of the Investigation under Gibbs' oversight. When more is known, they'll see how closely intertwined the murders are.

The Supervisors must wait on the landing, surrounded by four apartments, two to a side of the middle elevator, for their four Field Agents to join them via the stairs. No one says anything on the division of transportation, expressions remove the need for words.

The open green door to their extreme left is crisscrossed with clashing yellow 'Crime Scene' tape, but the doorway is guarded by a pair of uniformed Metro Police officers. The four men and two women identify themselves succinctly, sign the ubiquitous Crime Scene Log and duck under the tape to join four other uniformed Officers and two plain clothed men who need no introduction.

The newcomers immediately regret being so, for the stench that pervades the windowless living room is far too familiar. It makes it clear why the door is open even at risk of the across-the-hall tenant catching the officers off guard and seeing something. Many crime scenes stink of blood, open sphincters and drained bladders but this one...

x

McGee wishes for the ten thousandth time that some bright scientist - perhaps Abby - would invent some aid as an alternative to clothes pins, never a professional image for Investigators, particularly when survivors are present. Bleach and air fresheners, which they're allowed to carry, can only do so much, and while it's true that their sense of smell will soon succumb to the pummeling and escape into unconsciousness, these first ten minutes of waiting for that defeat are a major reason why he prefers to work with computers.

"Looks like Metro beat Nickis to the punch again," Detective Lieutenant Jeffrey Carpenter greets his old friend.

"Wasn't a race, Carp," Gibbs says as Carpenter's partner Clifford Scott particularly greets Melanie and Michelle.

"As if I'd ever race you."

"Interesting to see you try."

x

Interesting as banter might initially be, attention to it quickly gives way to the blood smeared green telephone receiver on the floor beside a brown coffee table and the equally smeared blood trail leading back to a room to their left.

"M. Lee Hudson, about twenty, was found here beside the phone, unconscious, when the first unit arrived," Carpenter summarizes. "There was enough probable cause from the 911 call to justify having the Super Mr. Jacks - front door sign said he's in 3B - open the door. EMTs report she has a broken arm, head wound, she apparently crawled from the bedroom."

"Body's in the bedroom," Clifford Scott says. "We held it for your ME when we got the ID." He looks past McGee, Templeton and Larsen. "Where is Ducky anyway? That assistant of his get lost again?"

"The Deputy Medical Examiner," Michelle encases the man in frost, "is my husband."

"Sorry," Scott says when he can thaw out.

"Let's see him," Gibbs directs, determined to establish control of these initial moments despite his understanding with Kelman. He does, however, break just enough to let her lead behind the Metro Detectives.

x

They follow the short trail into the bedroom where Wilfrid Hudson, apparently in his mid-20's - hard to tell from what's left of his face - lies face up upon the Queen size bed. His skull shows a multitude of wounds, cracked bone visible under torn flesh, testifying to a large number of overlapping attacks, while bloody bruises cover his upper chest, probably more wounds are hidden by the pajamas. The other side of the bed is vacant but also blood spattered.

There was no need for the path or the escort, for they could have found the bedroom by the stench alone. The two windows, though open two inches a piece in the late May warmth, offer no help against the odor. McGee decides Hudson would probably have soon gotten up to use the bathroom, more the pity that his killer hadn't waited.

He also realizes, on having seen this much of the apartment, that it had started its existence as one with the apartment beside it, that there had originally been two to each floor until someone had conceived the scheme - or would it qualify as a conspiracy? - to collect four rents instead of two. It's certain that the former layout allowed enough ventilation so the investigators wouldn't need to worry about becoming supplemental victims.

The medium size bedroom is too small for two detectives and six NCIS Agents, and Ducky will throw them all out upon his arrival - much to their relief - but it emphasizes the volume of blood that covers walls, ceiling and headboard. The pillow is drenched. The wounds are straight but the damage hints at a long, thin weapon.

x

Kelman looks about the too-crowded room. "Pat," she says to Larsen, "and Michelle..." she hesitates, wanting to have one of Gibbs' team on this part of the Investigation but conscious that Palmer isn't hers to order, not when those orders might conflict with the wishes of the Deputy SAIC. Gibbs, however, is looking at the deceased man's face, not to her, and his Rule 38 reads 'your case, your lead'. "Go down to Howard Uni Hospital, get a statement from the wife - widow."

"You got it, boss."

They turn in time for their exit to be blocked by Ducky and Jimmy. Neither Palmer says anything to the other but Gibbs notes the finger that trails along the man's hand as he and Ducky step out of the way, and the answering look behind the round lenses.

x

"That is a start," Ducky concedes, looking about the too-small room after Mr. Larsen and Mrs. Palmer pass, "but I need more room with the deceased so everybody - with the exception of my Deputy - who has not solved the mystery of this young man's demise kindly step outside." He hadn't expected the request to work on Gibbs, and since he stays Melanie Kelman does as well, as does Carpenter, but with the departure of Messers McGee, Templeton and Scott back into the living room the standees go from a crowded eight, including himself and Jimmy, to a barely manageable five.

x

"Now, Mister Hudson," he says as he approaches the bloody top of the bed, "what seems to be the problem?"

"Dead Duck." Jethro apparently can't avoid stating the oh-so-obvious conclusion; he supposes his friend has been saving that phrase and tone for quite some time and hasn't had a justifiable occasion to say it before. He's glad to give the opportunity; now that it's come and gone they can be rid of it.

"Ah, but what made him so?" he asks, trying to invoke the delicious flavor of mystery. "Thereby _hangs _the mystery, and in particular the disturbing coincidence of the source of our two victims."

"There's no coincidence."

All right, trying to evoke the flavor of mystery doesn't always work when ones audience has gorged themselves on said mysteries down through the years. There's always the Pathologist's Convention this summer. "Indeed; one of your rules is 'the only coincidences are premeditated'."

"Actually, that's 'Chelle's Rule 7," Jimmy interjects from the other side of the bed, the vacant and cleaner side where Missus Hudson had undoubtedly lain, "'the only ones who believe in coincidence are the ones who haven't been paying attention'."

"Rule 47," Gibbs also corrects with evident annoyance, quite probably thinking 'can't they get it right?' "is 'when you're handed conveniences, they're too damned convenient'."

"Actually, Ducky, you were quoting _my _Rule 19," Melanie tells him from near the foot of the double bed, her mood at being talked around quite evident in her tone.

"Indeed." He'd never intended to convey that the 'your' was directed or restricted to Jethro's team.

"You have your own Rules?" Jimmy asks, perhaps wondering how many people Gibbs has affected.

"Two hundred forty eight," the brunette woman assures him.

"How do you keep that many straight?"

"I embroider them on my panties," she says with a devastating smile.

Jimmy has the good grace to blush, or is the color invading his face caused by the picture he's evidently trying not to dwell upon?

Jeffrey Carpenter, on her left, seems to have no reason for even this much prevarication and Melanie's answering smile shows she'd hoped someone would have the courage to take her bait.

Ducky is glad Anthony isn't here to add his own off-color observation to the montage, yet he didn't miss the down-and-up glance Kelman gives Carpenter and knows the Detective's been permanently recorded in precise detail. The woman can remember what the boy beside her wore on their fifth day in kindergarten. He resolves to keep watch in the future for how - or if - that evaluation shall play out.

x

Jethro has evidently had enough, or doesn't like the new, evaluating look in the young SSA's eyes. "What about the body, Duck?" he asks testily.

"Our friend here," he indicates the smashed face along with the spattered blood on walls and ceiling and pooled atop the drenched pillow under the man's head, "was evidently struck at least one blow to the top of the head, which caused extensive bleeding, then several more strikes to the crown of the head coupled with a series of strikes to the face, neck, shoulders and torso."

The young man would have to have lived for some seconds to get this wash of blood into the pillow, thus he's confident in this much of his initial reconstruction. More detail will follow.

"How long do you figure it took?"

Too soon for that detail, despite Jethro's hope. "I shall have to determine that shortly. Machinist's Mate Hudson received multiple blows to his skull and chest. The width of the murder weapon appears to be approximately one inch; I shall be able to give you more detail shortly. Metro PD's EMTs describe Mrs. Hudson's injuries to include a head wound and a possibly broken right forearm." He'd learned this last on the drive out. Nice to be occasionally ahead of Jethro, he doesn't often enjoy the distinction.

"911 call went in to Metro at 0416," Jethro tells him.

"That is consistent with my estimate of Time of Death."

He sees Jethro has noted that the liver probe hasn't been unpacked yet.

x

Before David can use the camera to document the scene for their investigation - they'll get copies of Metro's determinations - Gibbs examines the body. The wounds and new-formed bruises, which stopped their flow and expanse seconds after the blows were inflicted, are long and point toward the right side of the bed. Gibbs moves Ducky to the left, determines the killer stood approximately near Hudson's waist when he swung whatever he used to club the couple.

But what has turned this case from a complex yet fairly straight-forward murder to a double homicide miles and hours apart?


	11. Cries for Help

Chapter Eleven  
Cries for Help

Karen Wetzel, rather than submit to her anticipated fate for returning to her family without tidings, has stayed at NCIS Headquarters.

She doesn't have a Visitor ID, not that she'd display it if she had one. She'd slipped past a distracted Security officer at the main entrance, used the Agents' entrance and bypassed the metal detector and x-ray machine with the same brazenness that'd gotten her through the simulated Embassy. She'd congratulated herself on her ingenuity, but now she can do nothing practical, must brazen out the moments when any legitimate agent passes her in a hallway, and always dreads the moment when someone who knows she doesn't belong here will catch and evict - or bust - her.

She can't find her father's murderer, and each roadblock rule drives another knife of his loss and her failure into her heart. She's not an agent, she's a badgeless trainee weeks away from graduation if she doesn't wash out. She's probably already washed out but this disaster has just delayed the Board from giving her the bad news. They're probably refraining from kicking her when she's down but soon she'll be out on her ear, not even a prospective potential wanna-be Agent, and forever closed off from the resources of this agency.

But before she's down and out she's going to solve her dad's death; _then _they can arrest her for impersonating an agent or trespassing or whatever.

Except she keeps _failing_. Agents can't investigate their father's murders and since she's not an agent she can't even fail by that much.

She's even a failure at failing.

x

Her undirected wandering while she searches for the impossible - something to do - brings her to a fourth floor corridor and the flash of a word at the corner of her eye. She turns to the placard beside the door, white on brown, which reads 'S. McGee - Chaplain'.

'This is a sign!' Rick Moranis had proclaimed in Ghostbusters.

'It's a sign, all right,' Annie Potts had countered. 'Gone out of business.'

Well, maybe this is a sign - that she's an utter failure as an agent on her own steam. Maybe it's time to look higher.

_Maybe_?

She remembers being introduced yesterday to a McGee, had seen him again downstairs - this must be a coincidence - but caring about it never enters her mind. This might well be fate, but at least 'This has to be better than going home.' She crosses the hall, knocks on the door.

No answer. She knocks again, then reaches for the knob.

'Of _course _it's locked,' she chastises herself. 'If he were in, he'd answer.'

Then she notices the small paper taped beside the handle. 'In Emergencies or outside Alpha Shift, please call 202-555-7284.'

She pulls her cell phone from the too snug pocket of her jeans and presses the directed code.

Four rings, then /Mother McGee./

x

She'd expected neither the feminine voice nor the appellation and isn't sure how to proceed.

/Hello?/ the voice in her ear calls uncertainly.

She can't let the woman hang up, but why is a woman answering the Chaplain's - _oh_! "Er, hell - hello? Is this - is this the NCIS Chaplain?" 'Stupid, fracking _ass _- the _name's _right on the freeping _sign_!'

/Yes it is./

Now that she's hearing more, she identifies the accent as Irish. "Ah, this is Spec–" 'yeah sure, start out with a lie, why don't I?' "This is, well, my name's Karen Wetzel and I'm standing outside your door and knock – that is..." '_Arg_, where have I heard that? Oh yeah, 'Revelations' and she must know that too.' "I mean I'm at NCIS and ..."

The silence she's reduced to hurts her stomach but she's run out of words; there's a fifteen word pileup on her mental freeway - the windmills of her mind have all fallen over in the gale until the woman says /I'm not there,/ but there's no humor in the words. /If you're calling ab–/

Tears long held wash away the word pileup and flood the windmills out of the plain as this last frustration overwhelms her. "My daddy's been _murdered _and they won't let me work the case because it's a 'conflict of interest' and I don't know what to do and I can't go home because my family won't understand because I'm an Agent I mean almost an agent and I really really need someone to talk to and I–" she's run herself out of breath and she's given no time to continue after a deep gulp.

/I'm at Saint Mary the Virgin Episcopal Church, New York Avenue Northwest. Do you know where that is?/

"Yes." She doesn't care that she's never heard of either. Thank God for Google.

/I'll meet you here./

"_Thank you, Father_!" She cuts the link a second before she wants to smack herself again.

xxx

Ducky has made his observations of Wilfrid Hudson's body upon the bloody double bed and McGee has taken his pictures, assisted by Ken Templeton who recorded the details of each exposure. Now Melanie Kelman, Templeton, DiNozzo, McGee, David and Metro detectives Jeffrey Carpenter and Clifford Scott pull apart the information available in the Hudson apartment with an eye to who might want the Machinist's Mate dead, particularly in so violent and gory a fashion.

McGee, predictably, focuses on the desktop computer in the living room, so when Gibbs and Kelman come out of the bedroom, making room so Ducky and Jimmy can maneuver the body into a bag and onto a gurney, that is where they find the computer forensics expert. "What've you got?" is how Gibbs begins the conversation.

"It looks like everything on this system is Mrs. Hudson's. I find nothing that indicates Wilfred Hudson has even been on the computer in the 40 something hours he's been stateside."

"He's been at sea for eleven months," Gibbs reminds him.

"Right," SSA Melanie Kelman says, "I'm sure he's found plenty of other buttons to push." She ignores their looks, turns to the front door where Templeton is just beginning to collect fingerprints. He'll place onto cards any prints from both the outer and inner knobs as well as the surrounding wood. "How you coming along, Ken?"

Templeton doesn't look back. "Knob's like I expected, a useless hodgepodge. No damage to the door or frame."

Gibbs turns to Kelman. "When we get back I want to MTAC Captain Clausen. I want you in on that."

"Gladly."

xxx

Ducky gets off the elevator onto Abby's level, one up from his own, and passes through the sliding reinforced safety glass door to find the Scientist staring intently into her microscope lens. Even from the doorway and past her white lab coat which hangs like a curtain between them he can read her tension. She'd recorded a message that she needed to see him, somewhat out of character for the forward woman, yet she hasn't glanced up at either the sliding of the door or the rapid series of beeps that accompany this action.

"Abby?" he calls quietly, doesn't want to break her concentration, yet the intensity of her response means it's more shattered than broken.

"_DUCKY_!" She whirls, hurries across the room with that shuffle-run he's known few people to master, they virtually collide, she throws her arms tightly about him.

Far from averse to being hugged, most especially by his ebullient friend, he can feel in her body that this hug isn't motivated by pleasure but by ... desperation?

She releases him an instant short of respiration becoming an issue, but when he sees her eyes the doctor in him isn't pleased. "When was the last time you slept?"

"The last time I saw my coffin but I have no time for that. I'm working half a dozen cases eighteen hours every day and the 'Caf-Pow!' machine has all my loose change, I have to go for mo–"

"In that case, I prescribe–"

She clasps her hands together in a begging posture. "Ducky I need a special favor please please please please _please _say yes!"

He recognizes she'll remain deaf to all his advice until her problem is addressed. "Well, when you put it like that, how could I resist?"

"You remember my friend Dawn Caldwell?"

x

This is an unexpected segue but finally the name comes back to him. "Oh yes, we met last July. She's a kindergarten teacher, as I recall." The encounter with the young woman is by no means his favorite memory. She had been sexually assaulted and had been the first of many, a number made unconscionably high by the intricacies of lawful jurisdiction. The violence of the attacks upon women in Clarkston Lakes had grown until finally one victim hadn't come away. That victim was a Naval officer and only then had NCIS acceded to Abby's efforts to get Jethro to intercede.

Following the disastrous dénouement of that case she'd come with Abby to Washington to recuperate only to have the most atrocious misfortune of being mistaken for Abby by a hired killer who'd beaten her so brutally she was hospitalized for several weeks.

"Twenty years ago I used to baby-sit for her. She was six and I was twelve."

"A daunting chasm at those ages, a meaningless blink now."

"Well, I'm going to see her in Jefferson Parish end of next week for two weeks. We're going to catch up and she video-chatted me a few days ago and I'm really worried she's acting strangely I can see there's something wrong but I can't put my finger on it and I was wondering if you could Psychologically Autopsy her and tell me what's wrong my mind is so stressed out I can't read–" Ducky holds up his hand to stem the verbal deluge.

"I shall endeavor to do my best. What do you have?"

"I record all my vid-chats, you never know what can be important."

"Well, if you would call up the footage, we'll give it a go."

x

He pulls her stool up, seats himself before the computer as Abby types as though afraid he might change his mind. "I've set the system for split screen. _Please _help me."

He's surprised she'd appeal again and uses it as an indicator of her distress. "Of course."

Abby presses a final button, the screen comes alight, with herself on the right and a 26 year old blonde woman on the left. She's actually thinner than Ducky recalls, noting the face framed by long, straight blonde hair. He hopes it's a mismemory on his part, and settles down to watch the footage. Conflicting musics play in each background, he tries to mentally filter them out.

x

"_Sunshine_!" the Abby on the screen exclaims.

"Hi, mom!" There's classical music playing in her background. Ducky recalls the young lady's never far from it and a portion of his mind seeks the title, another tries to silence Abby's fare.

Screen Abby adopts an old-lady higher pitch gravel. "Don't you 'mom' me, you young whipper-snapper."

"Haven't snapped a whip in my life," Dawn insists with a bright grin. Ducky recognizes now in her background Bach's Double Violin Concerto in D minor 2nd movement, and he's relieved when screen-Abby uses her remote to turn off 'Brain Matter'. "_Oh_, not true, I have."

Dawn curls a long blonde lock about her right index finger and Abby finally prompts. "And?"

"It took two weeks for Bobby-Ray to finally forgave me, but that's another story. Are you ready?"

"I'm ready. Flight's booked - _First Class_, I've got to indulge sometime, so why not for my overdue vacation? Bags are packed. I'm ready for two weeks of Mardi Gras."

Dawn's fingers halt their hair twirling. "Mardi Gras was months ago, You either missed it or else you're really early."

"It's _always _Mardi Gras when Abby Sciuto returns to Jefferson Parish."

"Amen."

"'sides, I couldn't make it then on account of the big wedding."

"Wed- wha- wait! You got _married_?"

"Not me. Friend of mine. Remember Tim McGee?"

"The guy you were running a boiling fever over? Only _yeah_. So, he did go and marry his partner after all?"

"Nope, he married his priest." Screen-Abby's face goes motionless but all expression falls off Dawn's face, all tone vanishes from her voice.

"I didn't know he was gay," she says through near-motionless lips. Abby's burst of laughter only disconcerts Dawn more. "Bi?" only makes her laugh harder.

"No, the priest's a woman," Abby says when she can get enough breath. Ducky recalls that in the community where Abby - and Dawn - had been born and raised they were more likely to have gays than women priests. "We have them up here."

"So, neither gay nor bi. _Good_. You almost _ruined _a whole year's worth of wet dreams." She runs her left hand fingers through her hair, pulling at the ends.

x

Abby slaps the control. "Oh God, I forgot how personal that got."

"Never fear, Miss Sciuto, I shall maintain all due discretion in my report."

She feels her heart launch on heavy thrusters to cram her throat at the thought of any of this being committed to permanent record until she sees his barely hidden smile. Her slap of his arm is more a downward stroke of fingertips and she restarts the images.

x

"Pipe down, YoungStar, he's too old for you."

"Not if _you _could date him, Vamperstein."

"Seriously, Sunshine, I'll send you some vids of the wedding. But why the call?"

"No, I'm just double-checking," Dawn continues to run her fingers through the straight blonde locks that frame her face and brush the tabletop, twirling some locks around her finger. "Remember, you're staying with us, room right next to mine's all fixed up. No excuses."

"I'm sleeping with Kevin?" Screen-Abby lights her eyes.

"You wish. Kev's in the Air Force, Staff Sergeant."

"No _way_. Kevin Caldwell couldn't follow an order if it was to collect his salary."

"Times they do change. Love you."

"Love you too, Sunshine."

"June 3rd."

"Be there"

"_or be a squircle_," they finish in unison and Dawn cuts the image.

x

The recording vanishes and Ducky looks up at the scientist. "A squircle?"

"A square circle. Just one of those silly 'kid-things' that carries through the years. Can you help me?"

He takes a few moments to ponder the whole. Actually, there's one aspect of the video that'd struck him with its prevalence. "This thing she does with her hair…?"

"She _never_ does that."

"Then that could well be significant. I note she pulls harder in times of stress, less so when discussing pleasant matters. Her reference to sexual matters seems to give her the greatest stress, but there is a definite note of concealment. Her words had an inordinate amount of sexual connotation for so brief a conversation. As I recall, last July she'd not only been assaulted but actually–"

"_Yes_, that's why I was hoping, seeing how things went with Jimmy, that you'd have some insight into what she's feeling."

"I do indeed," Ducky says, doesn't try to soften his grim tone. Jimmy, to save Megan Woods' life, had shot and killed a man. Dawn Caldwell, to protect a child, had used a rifle on her assailant. "What was the aftermath of that incident?"

"I don't know." He turns more toward her, amazed she can give such an answer. "The legal records are clear, Gibbs and the others worded their reports so that what Dawn had to do was more significant than what she did. But I _tried_ to get a look at the medical records. I can't."

x

"Interesting. And the result of your backdoor search?" He knows her too well to think she'd just let that sit.

"I've been too scared to do one." He supposes he thought he knew her, but this is becoming more and more atypical of Abby Sciuto, and he supposes his face says that quite plainly. "I didn't – I was scared she'd find out I was sneaking into her records."

He could've seen that lie from across the room. She'd been afraid about what _she _would find. However, he'll play along. "Whereas I, as a duly Authorized Officer of the Court, have front door access you lack."

"I'm _sorry_!"

"Never fear, my dear." He stands up off the stool, signaling their non-conversation is at an end. "I shall make discreet inquiry into her health and let you know what I find."

"Thank you. I love you, Ducky."

"Not to worry. Actually, I anticipate it'll feel as though I were some sort of undercover spy."

"Perhaps a mysterious Operative working for some super-secret agency out of a fake storefront?"

"Such things are not impossible, my dear."


	12. Too Many Cases

Chapter Twelve  
Too Many Cases

Two hours later a huge, irate face glares out at Melanie Kelman and Leroy Jethro Gibbs in MTAC's darkened well. "_Two _of my crew dead? _Murdered_? What in hell goes on in Washington?"

"Trying to find out, skipper." Gibbs doesn't try to be reassuring. For the time, all 6,000 plus men and women aboard the Aircraft Carrier are his suspects. "What connection did Wetzel and Hudson have?"

"Damned if I know. We're out eleven months. Hudson's on Alpha shift, Wetzel's on Gamma but you know how much that means."

"Yeah."

"I'm coming out there ay-sap and bringing your Agent Nevelle and a truck to load her entire office but we're getting to the bottom of this." He cuts the signal before either agent can say a word.

"I guess we should call Nevelle and warn her to pack," Kelman says to Gibbs' back as the man heads up the ramp.

"Already did. Come on."

x

When Kelman leaves the communications room she crosses the platform, looks over the rail and sees both Field Teams gathered in Gibbs' bullpen. Patrick Larsen, back from his hospital sojourn, commands attention from the bullpen's center, Kenneth Templeton leans on the short edge of Ziva David's desk, all Gibbs' people are in their places. As she descends the first staircase she calls down "What've you got, Pat?"

"M. Lee Hudson was so high on painkillers she was barely sure what the M stands for," he calls up to his descending boss who follows Gibbs on the stairs - never appropriate but typical of the man, "but after a while Michelle and I managed to eak out a pretty consistent description: biker leather and decals, biker tats, long black hair and unkempt beard, big and tough and swinging a tire iron down on them."

Gibbs leads the way into the irregular pentagon of desks but doesn't pause until he reaches his desk; he'll let the other three stand and glares at Templeton leaning on Ziva's desk until the man gets up.

"She tried to ward off his attack on her," Larsen continues, "and got a double compound fracture of the ulna, three broken ribs and a probable concussion for her efforts. Guy broke her third, fourth and fifth left ribs, Doctor says it's a wonder she managed to crawl to the phone, she could've cut through something and bled out internally. She says she never saw the guy before, just woke up to him swinging on her husband from his side of the bed."

"Any idea why he did it?"

"She doesn't even know her husband's dead. She thinks he's in the next room to hers."

"I recorded her testimony," Michelle says, holding up a micro-recorder so compact it's almost lost between her fingers "but it's a bit difficult to understand. Basically she says they have a very good and loving marriage, and she has no idea why they'd be targeted. Hudson said nothing to her about any problems aboard the Reagan."

"I found a home inventory on their computer," McGee reports, looking at his screen. The computer itself is in the Evidence Lockup, its hard drive mirrored to McGee's terabyte storage. "I'm comparing what's on it with the Crime Scene photos but some things don't match up. The Inventory, for instance, lists a 20 inch color TV alone in the living room but there's a full yet dusty Entertainment System there now."

Gibbs might normally be inclined to say 'do your best' but he know the man will. Instead he turns to DiNozzo. "What about you?"

x

DiNozzo and David had been assigned to follow up on William Wetzel's murder, an event that's looking less isolated by the moment. "We showed the picture of that black guy who went into Wetzel's room yesterday to everyone we came across and struck out big time."

"Even Jeanne Benoit?" McGee asks in broad, baiting tones.

"Like I said, struck out."

"You losing your touch, DiNozzo?"

"No, boss!" The day he can lose his 'touch' with the delectable Jeanne Benoit, he expects he'll retire from the Dating Game. Then again, he reasons that since he's in a 'committed relationship' - how hard it was to wrap his head around _that _- he ought to be retired.

x

"Absolutely no one recognized him," Ziva confirms, coming to her partner's aid. "I checked the Employment Records; no one fitting his description has ever been employed at Monroe."

Gibbs shakes his head. "And he managed to go from the parking lot past Security and other staff after oh-one-hundred and _no one_ saw him."

"I did not say that," Ziva counters.

"Then what _did _you say?" He has no patience for this class of mystery.

"Many people saw him. No one questioned his being there."

"The hospital's second floor east is being renovated," DiNozzo cuts in quickly. "Work continues around the clock, early Summer projected time and they're way behind on work, way ahead on costs."

"When is that new, DiNozzo?"

"Never, boss. Everyone got so used to strange and unfamiliar faces that they don't pay attention anymore."

"Wetzel was on the third floor west. So just anyone could _walk around_ after midnight and no one will look twice?"

"Or even once."

Gibbs restrains himself from saying anything, for the words that batter at his teeth would do him no credit.

x

"Ken, Pat," Melanie takes advantage of the momentary silence, "go back upstairs and pour through those e-files from the Reagan." She wants good progress before Captain Clausen carries through with his threat to truck in all of SAA Nevelle's files. "They didn't serve the same shift but what did Wetzel and Hudson have in common?"

"Palmer," Gibbs says, "dig into Hudson's widow; Ziva, you've got Wetzel's family. DiNozzo, go over that Agent's - Nevelle's - files on Wetzel and Hudson. By the time she and Clausen get here I want you to be an expert on those two."

"Right." This is the first he's hearing about Sasha Nevelle coming in again but he looks forward to the opportunity to work closely with her.

"McGee, keep digging into that thing, find me some answers. We'll be with Ducky." He leads Kelman from the room, never considering inquiring about her plans.

They seek two killers, a clean shaven black man and a white 'biker dude' with long hair, unkempt black beard and biker tattoos. Time to get some concrete answers.

x

McGee plans to pull some of the resources of Cyber Crime to help him and reaches for his phone, but it rings before he can touch it. "Special Agent McGee."

/Hoigh, a grá,/ greets a delightful voice.

"Hi yourself, sweetheart. To whom do I owe the _pleasure_?" He checks his watch; at quarter to two his lovely wife is probably at her Church office, as she normally makes the 'Sick and Shut-In' rounds in the morning on days when she's neither Celebrating the Noon Eucharist nor here for her usual Tuesday on-call.

/The Father, of course. But He guides everything including the reason for this call. I'll discuss pleasure another time, darling, but I've just had a visit from one of your Agents./ He knows some go to see her at Saint Mary the Virgin Church, it being more private and therefore occasionally preferable to being seen by a fellow agent entering her fourth floor office. /Bindle, I need - how would you, the writer, put it? - background material if I'm to help./

She'd taken up the pet name 'Bindle' for him in private conversation for, in her deep Irish brogue he's her huss-bund and she's never taken to the local 'husbind'. She'd called him 'Bind' once in teasing of the local pronunciation but it rapidly evolved into the more affectionate moniker.

He decides that there can't have been too much that the unnamed agent could have expressed in confidence or Shav would never mention she'd been visited. "Shoot."

/What have you and the others, especially Anthony I'm sure, done to Karen Wetzel?/

Tim's sure his expression, as he turns to stare at the man at the desk nearest his, must show something for Tony looks at him with deep suspicion - or perhaps apprehension.

"What?"

xx

Gibbs leads Supervisory Special Agent Melanie Kelman into the Autopsy suite to find the two MEs working on the brightly illuminated body of Machinist's Mate Wilfrid Hudson. His body has not yet been cut, the doctors are still at the external exam stage. For the first time in recent memory, he doesn't begin by asking what the older man has.

"Ah Jethro, right on time, by which, of course, I mean unconscionably early." Gibbs lets his silence be his request. "As you can see, Mister Hudson suffered multiple blunt force trauma from a thin object about an inch in width with a hexagonal cross section. I'd venture to say that the weapon of choice is something like-"

"A tire iron." He wishes Ducky would venture to say it a little faster.

"Yes, something that can generate a significant amount of force concentrated into a small area of impact."

Not for anything would Gibbs criticize his old friend's expounding on the very obvious, but he's occasionally suspected that Ducky's ME contract with former Director Morrow contained a 'per word' clause. If this is so, he intends to examine Palmer's contract very closely before the man signs it.

"Take us through it."

x

"The first blow," Ducky points to the top of Hudson's skull; washed now, it is easier to see how the bones have caved in, "opened a three inch wide, four inch long gash in the top of his skull. You must have been quite perturbed at this," he says parenthetically to the corpse.

"The first blow," he tells Gibbs without noticeable pause, "caused a wash of blood onto the headboard and pillow. Later attacks to the face are at differing angles, indicating that our friend might have been trying to evade or ward off the strikes. There are assaults directed from both the left and right, _that _you saw quite graphically from the castoff spatter on ceiling and walls, but the heaviest impacts are from the right, in a downward path of strikes along the shoulders and torso. The upward motion along the body, from left to right as it were, produced shallower, less effective wounds."

"Killer pummeled him."

"Indeed, in a series of fore- and backhand swings. There is a great deal of passion indicated here. This attack was personal."

Gibbs has already heard some of how the attack on the widow went. Some might consider her lucky to have suffered a twice broken arm, three broken ribs and a possible concussion.

x

Melanie looks up from close scrutiny of the body. "The hits to the chest and shoulders look like they came later. There's very little change to angle of impact, though it's too soon to try to judge height of the killer."

"No, that would be premature indeed," Ducky agrees. "However, you are quite correct. I'd say that while some of these impacts do display slight changes in angle, the majority do not. I would venture to say that Mister Hudson might have been unconscious or quite probably dead before many of these strikes fell. However, it is the multitude of hits to the crown and to the forehead, rather than to the face, that killed him."

"I count forty two hits."

"I will have to determine that during the autopsy itself, as many strikes overlap, but I suspect the number will be more in excess of sixty."

"Passion is right."

"Palmer and Larsen," Gibbs points out, "say the widow wasn't hit anywhere near as often."

"I have yet to see a report," Ducky counters, having left the examination of the living to the proper specialists, "though I quite agree. It looks as though the killer's intent was to incapacitate Mrs. Hudson to prevent her interference in her husband's murder."

They turn at the sound of the automatic doors to the elevator alcove sliding apart, Special Agents Susan Bourne and Sol Mitchner halt just within the room on sight of the two Supervisors, the pair of Pathologists and the unfamiliar corpse on the table.

Sol evidently decides to brass it out. "Fred sent us down to check if you have anything new on Chris Drakis' murder."

x

Ducky looks to Gibbs, his expression one of 'if you're quite done I have another case' but Melanie Kelman doesn't give him the chance to say it.

"It was murder, then?"

"Yes, ma'am, definitely," Mitchner declares.

Special Agent Afloat Christopher Drakis had been literally blown to charred pieces in an explosion that'd obliterated his house. He'd been SAA aboard the Aircraft Carrier USS Eisenhower, which had preceded the Reagan into port but at the Navy Yard, and had been back a day when the explosion of his house killed him.

"How?" Gibbs asks, pulling rank as Deputy SAIC to step over Kelman's inquiry.

"Doctor aboard the Eisenhower confirms he was sick with the flu when he left, we figure he never smelled the gas leaking through his house. It's a wonder that didn't kill him, all the windows were shut."

"Killer stripped the wires at the kitchen light fixture," Susan Bourne interjects.

"Double jeopardy," Mitchner confirms. "If the gas didn't kill him, a wonder in itself I said, turning on the light, possibly to check the stove, would." He doesn't have to mention that anyone else, possibly investigating Drakis' absence from some appointment, might have set off the explosion, resulting in more death and the possible further destruction of evidence.

x

"Clues? Suspects?" If not for the Wetzel, now the Wetzel / Hudson case, he'd be up to date on the investigation into their fellow agent's death. Two cases involving Aircraft Carriers bend the laws of probability beyond shattering.

"Still assembling clues," Mitchner assures him. "Drakis' house was spread over a city block, finer bits were found over half a mile away."

"Suspects;" Bourne says, "a Special Agent Afloat on a Carrier usually leaves a potential six thousand suspects."

Kelman, beside Gibbs, looks to him. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

Gibbs doesn't answer, he doesn't want to think it. Drakis was aboard the Eisenhower, docked here in the Navy Yard; Wetzel and Hudson were on the Reagan, berthed in Norfolk, 200 miles distant. The two apparently diverse cases are complex enough. Linked, they become a potential nightmare of integrated clues and investigations. He checks his watch - fourteen twenty eight - and looks to the others. "Bring it to Higgins. Conference in MTAC, sixteen hundred."


	13. Compiling the Clues

Chapter Thirteen  
Compiling the Clues

An hour and a half later eight men and five women crowd the MTAC bay, Jennifer Shepherd in the front row with Gibbs, Fred Higgins and Melanie Kelman while Tony DiNozzo, front and center, coordinates the briefing. Only Pathology and Science sections are not represented, Ducky, Jimmy and Abby being far too busy to attend save as faces on the left monitors beside the huge viewscreen.

"I draw your attention, ladies and gentlemen, to the main screen before you and the crater that represents the last–"

"A little less showmanship, Agent DiNozzo," Shepherd directs in the flattest of tones.

"Yes, ma'am." He clears his throat, figuratively clearing more than the mood. "Special Agent Afloat Christopher Drakis disembarked from the Eisenhower and reported in as soon as the ship docked here in the Navy Yard. He had his End-of-Tour debriefing with you, Madam Director, which you–"

"Which I cut short because of his flu," she finishes, anxious to move the narrative along, the 'Madam Director' doing little to improve her mood.

"He thereupon did return home, where he lived alone in what was, until the following morning, a very nice suburban house." He hardly has to elaborate, the crater displays the shape of the basement and is all that's left of the structure. Debris seen from the helicopter that overflew the scene covers the property most thickly but spread to neighboring properties and far beyond.

"We don't know exactly what he did that night but we figure he went to bed early."

"I found," Abby cuts in from the top screen, her pigtailed hair slapping her cheeks as she turns rapidly to consult something off screen and then back again, "metabolized chemicals which, to make a long explanation very short, trace back to a double dose of NyQuil together with Sudafed; not the best combination in the world - he obviously wanted to get over the flu in one night, not that that really works - but suffice it to say he was zonked. I doubt a brass band could've moved him before the triple whammy wore off."

x

"During the night," DiNozzo picks up again, "someone broke in, turned off the stove pilot light, stripped the insulation from the ceiling light and then just had to wait for the booby trap to be sprung. We're still looking for fingerprints, the explosion spread debris over a square block and the little things much further but both the fixture and wiring are clean, or as clean as something can be that was in the epicenter of such an explosion."

"Special Agent Drakis' body," Ducky cuts in from the middle left of the tower of monitors, apparently unwilling to wait to be recognized, "was cataclysmically dismembered and the outer dermis was badly burnt. I still do not have all the existent fragments, I'm missing a–"

"Doctor," Shepherd cuts in again. It's long after six already, this set of agents are all on two hours overtime, they've a lot of detail to get through and there's little time and even less patience for digression.

"Well, suffice it to say, the Cause of Death has yet to be ruled but the explosion did not help."

Shepherd barely manages to stifle a wince; one thing that typifies Ducky is his inclination for verbose digression but it's closely followed by his talent for inspired understatement.

x

Gibbs had taken the remote control from DiNozzo's hand less than two seconds after he's obtained it from one of the two technicians at the control panels at the left wall, but he restrains himself no longer and changes the main screen image to a grid of small white oblongs representing far too many files.

DiNozzo, noting the change in the lighting of his audience, glances backward to discover his new place in the narrative. "These are the reports Drakis accumulated during his last tour."

"We've been going over them," Max Crawford from Fred Higgins team reports from the third row, "but so far little jumps out at us. Drakis handled a drug case, six minor fistfights, some gambling including a floating craps game," no one bites the pun and he drops it, "and a sexual harassment case, not to mention six consensual cases among various ranks, all of which were left to simmer on the back burner. We're following up on the lot but on the whole there's nothing earth shattering in those files. Nothing other than the S.H. case would have any significant effect on anyone, this potentially on the accused Seaman's marriage as his wife got wind of it, but since that case is already over three months old and a matter of record, little would be gained by killing the SAA now. Still, we're looking into everything, that first and foremost."

"Drakis was less than a day stateside when he was killed." Shepherd has never liked that. The speed of planning and execution, coupled with the agent's bad luck in being sick, resulted in a murder that was always far too convenient.

That he survived the concentration of gas in the home, enough to fill the house and for the explosion to scatter it throughout the neighborhood, is remarkable in itself.

"Why didn't he die from the gas?" she demands. "Abby, how much as there?"

"Judging from the force of the explosion, I'd say no less than a three percent concentration, possibly all the way up to ten."

"We're still checking the house," Higgins reports. "Perhaps the bedroom had a good seal. It'll take some time before we can be sure."

x

Gibbs decides this line has gone as long as it can with the answers they've firmly determined and changes the image on the main screen to a combination official portrait and page one of the Service Record. DiNozzo, this time catching Gibbs finger movement on the control, looks back to discover his new place in his report.

"Lieutenant Commander William Wetzel, Second Officer aboard the Aircraft Carrier USS Ronald Reagan, developed sharp pain in his kidney which turned out to be a recurrence of uric stones, two of them. He was transported to Monroe University Hospital almost as soon as the Reagan docked at Norfolk because his Doctor is attending physician there, and he was killed that night at 0113 by a five times fatal dosage of Rocuronium, which relaxed to death every muscle in his body, including heart and diaphragm.

"His heart monitor was switched off at that time, body wasn't discovered until 0609 when daughter Anne made an impromptu visit to the hospital to tell daddy she'd just gotten engaged.

"Wife Ruth was in Pimmit Hills, Virginia, returning home in the a.m. from a business meeting. Sort of ruined my favorite suspect but Rule 28 is still valid: Sometimes the Spouse didn't do it. Her boss confirmed he sent her there because the conference was more urgent than hubby's ship pulling in after eleven months; a real sweetheart. Daughter Karen was in Georgia attending FLETC where she's studying to be - wait for it - an NCIS Agent."

x

Step by step, Tony takes the teams through the murders of Lt. Cmdr. Wetzel and Machinist's Mate Hudson. Michelle Palmer must now publicly admit she's made no progress tracking down Flight Deck officer Peter Acht, apparently the only person who holds a grudge against Wetzel for punitive action taken against him, though what argument Acht has with Hudson remains undetermined.

Ultimately all three groups are versed in the three Investigations and it's time to make cohesive plans.

Shepherd makes the final determination. The cases will be handled separately for now, but Susan Bourne, Patrick Larsen and Michelle Palmer have the added duty of integrating the clues with an eye to potential links that will bring the three teams together. The trio will confer this evening to compare the case files and communicate regularly thereafter.

After nearly an hour's briefing, none of them are thrilled by the extra overtime.

xx

It's nearly 1900 when each team separates on the platform outside MTAC. Higgins' and Kelman's teams head back to their respective fourth floor offices, Gibbs and his team descend the staircase with Shepherd to the man and woman who stand in Operations.

Captain Jacob Clausen and the USS Ronald Reagan's Special Agent Afloat Sasha Nevelle await them in Gibbs' bullpen. Nevelle displays no impatience at their long wait, not to her Director or the Headquarters Deputy SAIC but Clausen is not so restrained.

"About time you showed up, I've been cooling my heels here for a half hour."

Shepherd is the first one around the final turn and not about to allow a Navy Captain to reprimand her in her own headquarters. Ziva and Gibbs are the only ones who don't flinch at the impending battle.

x

"Captain Clausen?" They've never been introduced, it's not necessary.

"Jacob Clausen, and I want to know what you're doing to track down who's killing my people."

"Everything that can be in an investigation that's a day and a half old. Do you have any suspects who'd want your Second Officer and a Machinist's Mate dead?"

"No I don't, but I'm going to see this thing ended. We're out of Famagusta Bay and didn't lose this many in eleven months, now I'm down two people in two days."

"This way to my office, Captain." She stalks away back toward the stairs to the platform and the door beyond, leaving Clausen with no choice but to follow.

Left behind, Sasha Nevelle turns to Gibbs with a half shrug and an expression that says plainly she wishes she were back aboard ship, or anywhere other than facing down her Director.

"What did you find to tie those two together?" Gibbs asks instead. Disregarded, his team breaks to pursue the investigation they'd begun so many hours ago.

"As I sent you," Nevelle says, "there's nothing particularly outstanding in either of their files - aside from the minor things I noted."

DiNozzo had already hit the highlights - or lowlights - of a fairly unremarkable voyage.

x

Michelle checks her watch, knows full well that whenever things look too normal Gibbs always wants to find the unusual and that frequently means a lot of digging. It's after seven, Jimmy is home already - Ducky doesn't keep 'Gibbs-time' - and she now has a coordinator's duties attached to her already full day.

Already assigned to pulling apart the life of M. Lee Hudson, she starts a search for the name.

"Wrap it up."

She looks up, unable not to gape. Did Special Agent Gibbs just say, after only twelve and a half hours work, "?"

She's late joining the stampede for the elevator; Agent DiNozzo, Tim and Ziva already are up, gathering their jackets and other belongings before she's out of her chair. The only one caught more flat-footed by the command is Nevelle, who stands staring fish-eyed at the team leader as he grabs his own light jacket against the late May cool.

"_Wait _a minute," Nevelle protests as the team heads for the elevator. "Captain Clausen and I just drove two hundred miles to get here!"

"Should've thought about that before starting out," Gibbs advises.


	14. Night and Day, You Are the One

Chapter Fourteen  
Night and Day, You Are the One

La Chateau Julienne has rarely looked so elegant, Hollis Mann decides as she reads the menu at the secluded corner table. She's long anticipated this evening, made more pleasant by the company of the silver haired man crossing the large dining room toward her. His black suit actually compliments the silver, giving him a distinguished look of uncertain age balanced by determination and vitality. She glances down at the royal blue dress that catches the sheen of the lights and actually feels underdressed.

"Jethro," she greets him as he steps beside her, but when he takes her outstretched hand he bends and kisses it, a gesture that sends an electric current through her body. "Why, Jethro, so courtly."

The act is more in character with Ducky Mallard but she won't spoil the mood by mentioning it. As Gibbs sits down opposite her, his eyes don't always stay on hers.

"You're gorgeous."

"Thank you." She fears, however, that she could easily be overwhelmed by this new facet of him.

x

The dress is intentionally eye-locking and she must be careful not to sneeze or she'll flash the room, secluded table or no, but the look in his eyes makes the evening worth every risk.

She, however, remains focused on him. Black suit and crisp white shirt are vastly different from black field attire, and she must search his blue eyes to be certain this is the same man she's known for so long.

"You're staring," he tells her and brings her out of her fugue. The restaurant comes into existence again around her.

"Don't want to stop."

"Neither do I." But he does, only long enough to reach for and open the bottle of chilled champagne he'd called ahead to have delivered to her table when he'd realized the Wetzel / Hudson / Drakis case had made him later than he'd anticipated. He eases the cork from the bottle, a long gush of white foam may look elegant in one of DiNozzo's movies but not in real life, and loud reports aren't good around armed Federal Agents; though where she's keeping her weapon is a mystery he fully intends to delve into - later.

He fills each of their glasses, raises his own. "To the loveliest woman in Washington."

"Please ... stop. Red doesn't go with this shade of blue."

"That after all we've been through I can make you blush is very flattering."

"_You _make me blush every time I think of you."

The words are out before she'd realized her guard was so far down and now she does blush, unable to lift her gaze from the tabletop. Only his hand on her left one lets her look up.

"Then something else." He raises his glass again. "To your last night in palms."

She can't help but laugh. "That's odd enough to be safe." But as their glasses ring, she thinks how long tomorrow has been in coming, and of all the yesterdays she's had with this man - and all their tomorrows.

Tomorrow they'll be together at Fort McNair - but that's hours, and a dinner, and a night away.

xxx

A violent shake almost spills Michelle Palmer off the mattress and the scream of soul-torn terror makes her snatch at her Sig under her pillow. She forces herself to stop, finger inside the trigger guard, when she realizes what's happening. She lets go of the warm metal and fumbles for the lamp instead. She almost knocks it to the floor as another scream reverberates through the bedroom. She gets it turned on, squints at the glare and Jimmy is beside her, seated bolt upright and there's nothing in the room with them but a blast of terror that can rip the floral paper from the walls.

"Jimmy?" She reaches for him, he turns and the panic in his wide eyes rips her heart in half. But before she can say another word he virtually tackles her, clings tightly as he drives her back onto the mattress, his face to her chest and his weeping is too violent.

He's not just weeping, something wrenches soul-tearing sobs from him as he clings tightly, pins her arms to her sides. His tears soak through her red nightgown and rip tears from her too.

"I can't stand this anymore," she whispers, the tears slipping down each side of her face as she lays trapped under Jimmy, unable to help him. He's crying so hard he can't even know she is too. "Goddess I can't - I _can't_. Help us, Goddess, I can't deal with this anymore."

He must hear her for his own weeping grows wilder, more tempestuous.

"Jimmy, stop it. Please _stop _it! I can't _deal _with this anymore. Talk to me. Stop this. Please _stop _this! PLEASE!"

She manages to see the lighted face of the clock radio past her tears: 2:13. "Jimmy, _please stop_."

"I can't," and she can barely make out the words. He holds her so tightly, weeping onto her chest, she can't move her arms and her tears sting her eyes. She can't reach to wipe them away and the pain grows worse.

"Jimmy, I'm _begging_ you. Please stop. Let me go." She can't endure the pain in her tearing eyes but must until he gradually calms enough for her to pry her arms loose. She turns out of his grip, uses the sheet to rub her eyes until after too long the agony fades.

x

"_Why_?" She looks back to him, he looks exhausted from his catharsis but she can't think of sleep. "What happened? What was it?"

"You were dead."

She bites her tongue hard behind closed lips lest the '_again_' slip through. Her death - always violent - is the theme of most of his nightmares over this past near year.

She eases the force on her tongue, certain she's leaving cuts, enough to say "What happened?" She barely manages to hide her exasperation.

"You drove up into a machine gun crossfire ambush. Remember Sonny Corleone in the Godfather?"

They'd watched it last week on TCM. 'I should've _known _it was a mistake,' she thinks bitterly.

"You screamed my name while a dozen men on either side–"

She shoves him, manages to get him away. "That's IT! That is _IT_! From now on you don't watch anything but the _Disney _Channel!"

He shakes his head. "Bambi's mother?"

She screams, startling him into pulling back to nearly fall off the bed, frustration and fury ripping her as she throws the light sheet, stands to face him. "Merciful _GODDESS_, I can't _stand _this anymore!"

"How do you think _I _feel?" he bites back as hard. "They're _my _nightmares!"

"But _I'm _the one who keeps having to _die_ - and then pull you down from them. Why can't you have nightmares about something ELSE?"

"LIKE WHAT?"

"_P_*!" She bites the ludicrous 'puppies' back as reason clicks on. If they don't stop this, they're going to hurt one another far worse. She takes a lung rupturing breath, holds it as long as she can stand, lets it out in a gush and strains for a conciliatory, reasonable tone. "Look, it's okay."

"It's NOT okay!"

x

She sees reason hasn't 'clicked on' for him, that seated facing her he's still deep into his distress, now morphed into frustrated anger. She looks down at her red negligee, wrinkled and quite possibly torn, but she'll check that later. Right now she just wants to get through to him. It's 2:17, they're both exhausted and on the verge of saying things they can't pull back. She sits down close, presses closer to him, snuggles her body to his, but for the very first time he pulls away from her, turns his whole body from her.

"That's your answer for everything?"

"Not everything," she admits, vastly unsure, "but it usually helps when you're–"

It's not Jimmy who turns on her. "When I'm _what_? Crazy? _Insane_? DEMENTED?"

"Jimmy?" She gets off the bed, backs away. "You're scaring me _worse _now."

x

Her fear snaps him back to the last nightmare, to her bruised and bloody body, to her screams for him to move out, to her sobbing 'I just wanted to help'. "'Chelle, I'm _sorry_." He stands, approaches her around to her side of the queen bed and she lets him put his arms about her, but they're both too aware that this time she's letting him. "I'm so sorry."

"Jimmy," she clutches his tee shirt, almost holing it with her nails in an effort to not let him slip away, "for once would you please just _shut up_?"

xxx

Photon torpedo detonations rock the starship violently port - starboard - port - starboard. Then, as inertial dampeners finally engage Karen Wetzel becomes aware that the turbulence is connected with the firm hand on her shoulder.

"Cap-n Pi-crd had beder have ordrd an Emer-jncy Susser Sep," she mumbles into the muffling pillow.

"What?" her sister's voice comes from the vicinity of the Horse Head Nebula.

Karen feels every muscle in her body shriek at her as she forces herself to turn over and brush long, directionless black strands from in front of her eyes. The upward view is no more pleasant. "Thiss'd bedder be im - portnt."

"You sacked out without telling mom and me about the Investigation."

Karen groans, turns back over, then makes herself push up from the mattress, gives in to the pain and quits, falls face down into the enveloping pillow. She'd 'sacked out' because she'd ridden the Metro for hours after seeing that woman Chaplain on New York Avenue Northwest rather than coming home and admitting utter failure, then she'd walked back home from the station, found an open bar and, because she's not a full-fledged NCIS Agent with all their rules, went in and made the acquaintance of every bottle - she supposes - in the building.

She doesn't remember sacking out. She doesn't remember coming home, though she probably did since this is her bed - that's certainly her cranky big sister hovering over her - but she doesn't remember getting undressed and if these are yesterday's clothes still on her she doesn't want to see.

x

"WILL YOU GET UP?" thunders through her brain, chased by a thousand jackhammers. She'd been too drunk to remember that she's hung over, but now that she remembers she feels like the main course at a Delgonian clam bake.

"Whiiyy?" she vibrates the word into the pillow.

"We're going to the Funeral Home. _Remember_?"

Thoroughly reminded why she hates her sister's voice, she forces her eyes open and to focus near what's probably the vicinity of her window. Either it's really dark out there or they're in the middle of Tropical Storm Boadicea and no one told her.

"Wha hopp-n to the shun?"

"It's quarter to five."

This brings her completely off the pillow. "Quata ta mother-lovin' _five_?"

"Mom wants us ready to leave on time."

"Quarter to veruulik _five_? You _petaQ_! No one goesh ta-a Fuenral Parla at qua-rer ta _five_. The _corpses _aren evenn awayik."

"DON'T YOU TALK TO ME ABOUT CORPSES!" would blast her off the bed if that weren't pressed to the wall. "DAD'S DEAD AND YOU LAY THERE TALKING NONSENSE WITH ENOUGH BOOZE ON YOUR BREATH TO TURN YOUR MOUTH INTO A GOD DAMNED FLAME THROWER AND BURN THIS DUMP DOWN! I CAN'T WAIT TO GET MARRIED AND GET OUT OF HERE BUT IF YOU WON'T HELP BURY HIM THEN _FIND OUT WHO KILLED HIM_!"

Karen clutches her exploding head, feels her brain pulverized by shrapnel on an Artillery Testing Range and remembers again why she'd applied to FLETC in Georgia.

xxx

Siobhan McGee finishes at the stove with the last pan of their traditional Irish breakfast when she hears Tim announce his arrival with a '_Yum_', the tone of which she suspects has little to do with the bangers or the rashers, the pudding or the eggs, the beans or the potatoes or the tomatoes or the brown bread and more with her light pink, very sheer bikini panties and matching, frilly and nearly see-through demi-bra.

This is one of Timmy's gifts. Since their wedding she's broken out to expressions of sensuality - and his contribution to that is in outrageously sexy attire to wear under her formal 'uniform'. She frequently blushes to open her drawer and be surprised by a new scandalous set, especially since he usually hides - _he'd better not throw out_ - a normal set for every sexy one he buys. She particularly gets red faced to know that in so many formal settings she's wearing his gifts, so powerful an effect do they have on her thoughts of him and the awareness that he's the only one who knows what she's wearing that when he gets home...

"We starting with desert, hon?"

"You've _had _your desert, a grá," she tells him and looks back; he's fully dressed. "And thank you." Desert started with sleeplessness for both of them at a little after three and had taken over an hour to finish.

After her shower, and during his, she'd opened her drawer and found this set laid out on top and she'd blushed to know he wants her to wear them today and to think of him. The panties are silk, extra fancy and this bra is just as see-through and frilly, has barely enough to cover her nipples and together they make her feel like she's wearing nothing.

She's sure that, to his eyes, she is.

x

She brings the final pan to the table and dispenses the last of the humongous breakfast into two plates. "But I'm going to a Diocesan Conference on Episcopal Charities at the National Cathedral this morning and that'll take hours."

"You're going to pull in a lot of donations," he predicts with a smile, studying her appreciatively as he approaches.

She turns, sets the pan into the sink and runs water into it. "My _clothes _are still in the Cleaner bags–"

x

His arms slip about her body under her arms and his hands cup her breasts. Those hands do feel so good, especially when he gently squeezes, working his fingers, one finger teasing each nipple which she feels right down to her...

She turns the water off in time as he kisses her neck through her hair and those sensations chase and play sensuous tag with the others throughout her tingling body. She'd felt his eyes petting her since he'd stepped into the room, now his hands, his lips...

"_Ooohhhh_." She leans back, melts into his (already clothed darn it) body, quite undone. His touch, his simple presence, feel so good and she feels herself getting ready for him–

Maybe this feels _too _good. They have to go to work, she has an appointment she simply cannot miss, but when she turns around to tell him she turns right into his kiss.

x

Timmy's her world's best kisser - not admittedly that she's known many men - but she holds him close, this feels even better and she extends the kiss, lets him build it with mounting sensuality and goes along for the delightful ride - until he slips his hands down her back and invades her panties, his hands now cupping her bare bum.

No, this isn't a good morning; breakfast's getting cold while she feels against the front of her panties that he's getting hot. So, she can't deny, is she. Just the thought, the feel of what he has for her even after less than an hour has her about to ruin these...

x

She pushes, not hard but definitely and more firmly than she wants to until he moves so far that his palms must slip off her and back out of her panties. She turns him.

"Hot breakfast _that _way."

"Doesn't taste as good."

The night had been fun, _very _much fun, but she gives a slightly firmer push. "But there is no way I'm having breakfast in my 'uniform' before I push off to the Cathedral," she finishes the long interrupted point, emphasizing that it was very nice but she wants to concentrate on business. She hadn't put on her clothes, still in the cleaner bag, because she's told him already of her theory, the one about the probability of messing her clothes at meal is always proportionate to the importance of the event.

"I'm not complaining," he says, sitting down, his eyes not slipping from her for an instant. "Far as I'm concerned, they can schedule one of those conferences every morning."

She sits down opposite him at the small table, picks up her fork. "Heaven forbid. Once a quarter is quite enough, thank you very much."

He says nothing but she follows the line of his stare and looks down. His sensual manipulations have made her left nipple, spiked as erotically as her right, peek out over her half-cup and she firmly puts it back into hiding with a faux glare. "Timothy S. McGee, you should be ashamed, taking advantage of a helpless, innocent maiden."

x

"Never." Well, maiden no longer, he thinks, innocent yes but helpless? She can take good care of herself - now that she can see. And since he has no middle initial she's taken, since their wedding, to using one to go with whatever she's tagging him. "What's S mean?"

"_Satyr_. Your mind should be washed with soap for what you're thinking."

"Then let's have a shower."

She grins. "We already did; you're clean and I am pure, washed white in the blood of the Lamb."

She knows she's being unfair because there's no way he'd ever challenge that one. The sex talk had been nice, the intimacy nicer, his touch very very nice, the actual sex nicest of all, but she can see in his eyes he's gotten her message.

x

Yesterday he knew, when she mentioned this conference, how much work it'll be, which is why when she'd left the bedroom before true dawn he'd laid at the top of her underwear drawer this selection, perhaps the wispiest of his gifts and he's gratified she didn't refuse his choice.

Before their wedding she'd never indulged in 'girly' attire but since then he'll undermine her formal inclinations with his special gifts. He'll balance the most formal occasions – _except _when she'll be at the altar, he won't go that far – with 'indulgences', secret reminders of her womanhood, her sensuality, that she'd never permitted herself before.

He's been mean, he knows, but this is something he'll never apologize for, that over the past few weeks he's managed to have her more common bits of underwear get lost as he replaces them, surprising her - fairly often - with the sexiest and most scandalous underwear, the more extreme the better. He suspects he's not the only man with a Victoria's Secret account, but he's certainly the one who most assiduously searches out the most extreme and least material samples of indulgence.

He's about to look for another way to turn back to the romance, and the sensuality - if he can figure a way around that stopper - when the radio on the shelf over the stove clicks on.

Shav can't wake to music, it puts her more deeply asleep. He gets enough bad news at work. This week's compromise is that she'll get up, retune the station for him and come out here. Next week he does breakfast.

He hasn't given up on his search, probably on Internet radio, for a station where the reporter sings the news. For today, this one is saying: "-yland local news. Our top stories this hour, Silver Spring Police still have no clues in the death of Margaret Tragule, whose body was found yesterday in her apartment after neighbors complained of a foul odor and called the police."

Shav gets up, crosses the room. "Margaret Tragule was found gagged, bound to her bed, but police are not releasing any more infor–"

x

She pauses for a moment, concludes her silence by crossing herself and then returns to her place.

"What was that about?" he asks. Concerned with the Wetzel / Hudson / Drakis(?) case, he's had little time for other news - or crimes - but this is right here in Silver Spring.

"It happened yesterday, but the Beacon said she'd been _sexually assaulted_ and beaten to death a few days ago."

She says nothing more, her hardness more than enough to convey her feelings and he'd just as soon be off this topic. Ever since what that monster did to her in January she has no tolerance for euphemisms like 'sexually assaulted', considering them just ways that people use to whitewash the reality of what happens to women, to make such things palatable when they should nauseate.

He reaches out, takes her hand but she pulls it back, then a moment later grips his hand even more firmly. Their eyes meet.

"It's all right," she whispers. She visibly pushes the story, the memories, back. "Tell me about _your _day," she says, lets go and picks up her tea cup.

He'd just as soon forget but knows he can't. For one thing, Gibbs is going to want to know, among a dozen other things, "What did Karen Wetzel tell you at Church yesterday?"

x

Siobhan sets the cup down, rises and comes around the table to step behind him. She takes his ears in each hand, holds him still, bends and kisses the top of his head, a long, lingering, loving buss. Then she lets go and slaps the spot hard.

"_OW_!" He holds his head as she resumes her seat. "I prefer the first part. And not even Gibbs hits that hard."

"I always do things better than he does, and I'd ex_pect _that by now you'd know better than to ask me that kind of question."

Obviously she's not as 'all right' as she'd have him believe, but he tries to level that with distracting facetiousness. "What, she didn't confess, did she?"

The young woman's whereabouts during her father's murder are fully documented; she'd been in the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia. Siobhan moves as though to get up again and he holds up his hands. "All right, I give. But I'll have to tell Gibbs something."

"There's nothing to tell. She's a poor, upset girl who's lost her father and feels compelled to break the case - and her mother and sister aren't helping with their unrealistic expectations. _I _have more access to Enkiss Classified information than she does, I have insight into every Agent in that building and know where all the skeletons are - Ducky's Suite - but she's compelled to try to break this case for her father and her family's riding her ass until she does."

When his wife uses such terms as 'ass' he knows how affected she is. As good an indicator as the intensity of her brogue - now quite sharp - is, her words convey depths even her voice cannot.

"I suspected from her tone when she called," she continues, "that Agent Gibbs and the others, particularly Anthony, had been giving her an especially rough time, but I was wrong."

When he goes from 'Jethro' to 'Agent Gibbs' he's lost points, but Tim's particularly concerned with another. "You really don't like him, do you?"

"Who?"

"Tony."

x

She stops, clearly won't give a snap answer. It's several seconds before she does answer. "We teach to hate the sin but love the sinner. I don't dislike Anthony - exactly - but I don't trust him."

Tim has to admit that lately there's a lot not to trust, but this attitude has gone on much longer than a few weeks and he tells her so.

She sets down her fork, takes a long breath. "Darling, there's an Irish saying: Ní féider le fear mbeidh a thugann aire do bhean sa tsúil a bheith iotaofa'."

She's taught him a lot, but he's missed quite a few words this time. "What does that mean?"

"A man who will not look a woman in the eye cannot be trusted."

"He looks you in the eye." He's made sure of that.

"He _makes _himself look up into my eyes, but it's always the second place he looks at any woman facing him. He locks eyes with me and forces himself to hold it, but he tries to hope I won't notice and the effort makes me notice."

"I'll talk to him about that."

"You will not. You won't change him and you'll only get into a fight by mentioning it. I've accepted long ago that it's the way Anthony is wired and he's not going to be able to change. I think he doesn't even know he's doing it any more than he's aware 24/7 of his breathing. It's Anthony and it'll accomplish nothing for you to point it out."

"Okay." He hasn't given a more grudging agreement in months.

She reaches out, her hand on his. "Hon, you'll always be my Knight in Shining Armor, but in this you'll only both get dented, and shrapnel will litter your bullpen for everyone to trip over."

x

She's up again, stands beside him, and places both hands upon his head. Her tone turns fervent. "God watch over you and keep you. May He give His angels charge over you, to precede and follow you, to watch over your going out and your coming in, to keep you from stumbling and keep you safe - and to bring you safely _home_."

"Amen. What was that for?" he asks when she sits back down. She often blesses him, sometimes spontaneously, but rarely with such intensity.

"I don't know," she confesses. "I was just moved... I had the sudden feeling that you were going to need it."

They say little for the rest of the meal, each of them wondering what that sudden need foreshadows.


	15. Prequel to Death

Chapter Fifteen  
Prequel to Death

When Leroy Jethro Gibbs reaches his desk the first thing he sees after checking attendance - his team is collectively smart enough to beat him into work and be hard on the job this early Friday morning with far too much work to do - is the flashing message light on his desk phone. Grateful for a moment's silence - for once his agents don't fill the air with useless chatter - he takes a strong draught of his first morning coffee, picks up the receiver and presses the button to break the blessed silence.

/Hey Deputy Special Agent-in-Charge Gibbsie,/ Gina Lollobrigida's voice teases. She's the only woman he knows who'd dare - besides Abby. /I thought you kept longer, or at least less sane hours than I do. Call me back ay-sap, I'm about to give you payback for all the scoops and exclusives. Ciao./

Lollobrigida is a newspaper reporter with the Daily who, months ago, struck a deal with him. In exchange for heads-ups and early or sometimes exclusive news on NCIS cases, and the occasional payback of help with disseminating 'doctored' information NCIS wants perps to know, she provides factual and accurate coverage that has pulled NCIS out from under the umbrella of 'Federal Authorities', giving credit where due and always getting the names and spelling right. To date she's gotten quite the advantage in news that has made a name for her in her field, and if she thinks she has information that will even the scales he wants to hear it.

The woman's cell cuts on the third ring. /I always thought you were an early riser./

"Busy. Ciao?" She's not Italian, her only resemblance to the old time actress is a marriage name. He won't even address the 'Gibbsie'.

/Had to get your attention./

"You always have it. Why do you want it now?"

/Because I hadn't heard from you and when I asked one of my fellow reporters what NCIS found out about the Navy Petty Officer who was found on Tuesday night with his throat slit the proverbial ear-to-ear, he said NCIS isn't involved, that it's a Virginia State Trooper case./

x

Gibbs feels his gut tighten and do unpleasant things to the coffee soaked breakfast. "Petty Officer is from the Aircraft Carrier Ronald Reagan." He won't make it a question.

/Oh,/ she sounds deflated, /then he was wrong, it was your case./

"It is _now_. Tell me." His team turns as one to him, no doubt alerted by his murderous tone.

/Call came in to State Troopers from Chesterbrook Tuesday night, man with his throat cut. All we got on an ID is Robert Presit, widow's name is Mary and that he's a Petty Officer First Class, assigned to the USS Ronald Reagan, Communications Section. Troopers are being stingy with the rest./

"More than you know. What else?"

/That's it. I hit a brick wall./

"Thanks, Gina. I owe you one."

/Darn, I'll never get off from on top./

He ignores the entendre, hopes she's used to being hung up on by now because he's not in the mood for long leave-taking. "McGee, Chesterbrook address on PO1 Robert Presit of Reagan's Communications. Palmer, you've got the widow Mary. DiNozzo, David, you're with me. Get the truck ready."

He presses the intercom switch, dials Ducky's code, but only to alert the man to a three day old body certainly in the hands of the Virginia authorities. While Ducky tracks down information on the autopsy, he'll go to Chesterbrook to break some heads and he's bringing his two best breakers with him.

xx

Tony DiNozzo fights to keep the large MCRT truck from doing turns on two wheels as he struggles to keep visual contact with his angry boss' car.

"Boss is burning rubber and follicles," he says.

"If that is your way of saying he is angry because this murder predates Commander Wetzel's and if the State Troopers had not been so high handed as to keep the information to themselves it is possible that at least Machinist's Mate Hudson might have been saved from a serial killer, then I agree. He is pissed."

"Uh... yeah, that."

"Turnoff is in a quarter mile. At this speed that should be in about five seconds."

DiNozzo isn't sure David isn't developing a sense of irony or is clairvoyant. Either way, they arrive at their destination in very short order.

xx

That destination is a three story apartment house little different than any of its fellows. They'd all probably started life as single family homes in the early 20th century and had been converted into individual apartments to meet the demands of the economy if not the population.

There's nothing visible on the street to mark the location as having any significance, not until Gibbs parks directly out front, the MCRT truck parks behind it and a pair of Virginia Troopers cross the street to intercept them.

"Help you people?" the lead Trooper inquires in official/polite.

Gibbs won't consider that they misread the words on all sides of the truck but he draws his ID packet and formally identifies all three agents.

"This is a Crime Scene," the Trooper tells him.

"Our Crime Scene. Thanks for holding it for us."

"How's this your scene?"

Gibbs had been willing to be courteous, his thanks had held toned down irony, but he won't credit their not knowing the identity of the victim. After a few seconds of steely-eyed stare, the Trooper blinks first.

"I'll have to call my Lieutenant."

"You do that, Trooper... Hinkstrom. You'll know where to find us."

xx

The second floor apartment is blocked by yellow Crime Scene tape and the door sealed with an Official Warning from the Virginia authorities announcing penalty for breaking the seal. Gibbs will leave the yellow tape undisturbed, the sign yields to Rule 9. He keeps his blade sharp for just such reasons.

The Presit apartment is no more remarkable on the inside than the building is on the out; four rooms of medium size and modest furnishings. PO1s make a reasonable income but the apartment has that long-lived in, moderately cluttered air that says 'pre-PO days'.

The rest of the apartment doesn't concern Gibbs yet. He leaves David to check the door and all other ways into and out of the apartment, he wants to see the bedroom.

The room is little different than what Gina Lollobrigida had led him to expect. The bed has been stripped, but there's blood spatter on the headboard and wall behind it, while a large stain on the mattress testifies to a slit throat.

The extent of blood makes one thing clear. "No arterial spurt," DiNozzo says as he hoists the large CS camera and starts taking pictures. He must keep his own log so the process, commencing with the pan from the SE corner, will take quite some time.

"Killer didn't cut the carotid, unless he was lying on his side." Gibbs doesn't think so. "It looks like he bled out."

"GIBBS."

Ziva's call from the living room outside precedes an angry voice by half a second.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Keep it up," Gibbs directs DiNozzo as he stalks from the room to find a VST Lieutenant stalking toward him. "Our _jobs_!" he declares with enough force to halt the tall man, grateful to finally have someone he can rip apart.

"This is our Crime Scene."

"The Hell it is. Robert Presit is a Navy Petty Officer First Class - you knew that and knew you were supposed to call NCIS in the minute you found out."

"I don't need a bunch of High School dropout, wanna-be Security Guards interfering in a Police Investigation."

"You don't know what you need. This is the first of _three _murders of Sailors from the same ship. If you'd done your jobs right we might not have been able to prevent the second but we'd sure as hell have prevented the third. Did you even confer with anyone from his ship?"

"We've got the situation firmly in hand. We've interviewed the widow and found out she had nothing to do with the husband's murder."

"How is she?"

"Hyster– What the hell are you asking for? You have–"

"The authority to throw your badge in my garbage can." He doesn't, but it's enough to make the man blink. "Your next command will be on a grade school street corner."

Perhaps a trifle over the top, but when he ultimately leads his team out and seals the door an hour later with an NCIS CS seal, he has the details of the investigation to date. Palmer's already reported Mary Presit's parent's home address while they were still en route. A further call will help Ducky in securing and transporting the Petty Officer's body from the Virginia morgue to its appropriate resting place.

xx

"Ziva, what about the door?" he asks as soon as they hit the street.

"Abby can tell us for sure but I think it was picked. There is no damage to lock, door or frame."

He yanks his cell phone from his pocket, the connection doesn't take long. "Skipper, you've got _three _down. Pull your people in."

/Already gave that order./

xxx

Michelle Palmer considers the document she's just opened on her monitor. "Tim," she calls out to her partner to her left, "didn't Mrs. Hudson say she and Wilfrid had a good marriage?"

"Sounded like it to me." Michelle and Patrick Larsen had interviewed her and though she was reported to have been incoherent at that time due to her medications, that part of their report had seemed clear. When the team had listened to the tape of the interview, what's what they'd gleaned from the slurred mumbling.

"From what I've been reading, maybe you and I should take a trip back out there, talk to her when she's not doped up."

"What've you got?"

"Quite a few things that say it wasn't the bunnies and rainbows she made it out to be." She gets up. "Let me hit the head and then we go out there?" She leaves it on a questioning lilt; he's the senior officer.

"Fine. I'm not finding much glued to this desk. I'll be ready before you're back."

x

Tim returns to his so-far-fruitless search and decides he'll be content if he can tell Gibbs just one new fact, but a minute later his attention is broken by stentorian breathing. When he looks to his right Jimmy Palmer, still in scrubs that clash sharply with his bloodless face, is bent over his wife's desk. He's breathing like he's tried to run a mile in two minutes, trembling so violently he could shake the desk apart as he clutches it with bloodless hands.

'He's a diabetic,' he remembers, 'but this is more like a seizure.' "Jimmy, are you okay?"

In hindsight he'll consider it the stupidest question to pass his lips this year but it does get Jimmy's attention. The shuddering man's eyes are so wide behind his glasses Tim's not sure he shouldn't call the EMTs.

"_Where is she_?"

"Michelle?" Okay, maybe _that's _the stupidest question, but it brings Jimmy to his desk. Though the rail thin man brings his hands down with a force that exceeds Gibbs at his most irate, there's no anger in Palmer, there's soul-rending panic. "She's in the ladies r–"

He's talking to empty air; Jimmy's run from the bullpen almost fast enough to leave a trail of loose papers fluttering in his wake.

Unsure if he should call his partner to alert her, or call Ducky for medical aid, Tim crosses to her desk and finds on her monitor a Court document, Docket 63903-41. It has the usual headers but large on the screen in too elegant Old English font is '_Petition for Decree of Divorce_'

'The undersigned, a resident of the District of Columbia, Michelle Lee–'. Tim's heart jumps too, he well understands Jimmy's panic, but when curiosity overcomes him - how did things get this bad without anyone being able to help? - he scrolls down a line, the document jumps up on the screen and he finds the balance of the name: Hudson.

"Oh, no."

xx

Two women are nearly batted off their feet as the ladies room door implodes. "'_CHELLE_!"

At a sink, Michelle jumps at the crash and wild cry and is astonished to see her frantic husband burst into the room and to her. "Hon–?" is as far as she gets before being crushed in his arms.

"'Chelle, please don't! I'm _begging_ you, please don't do this! I'll change, I _swear _I will. I'll do anything you want - become anything - anyone - you want but please, _please _don't do it. I can't live without you I'll - I'll do anything you say just please _please _change your mind give me a chance I love you I can change I'll do anything just please say you'll give me another chance!"

She sees past his side, a difficult thing as the tightness of his boa constrictor grip smothers her, a portion of one of the women and, embarrassed, realizes they must both be staring at this scene. "I'll give you another chance," she squeaks to get him to let her go, but his arms tighten.

"Thank you _thank you_ THANK YOU!"

"Jim-," she gasps, barely able to whisper, "…my! Can't - _breathe_!"

"Oh - sorry." He lets go and she staggers back, drags air deep into her lungs. Now she can see the two agents by the door.

"Would you _please EXCUSE _us?" When they go she looks up at her towering husband. "Jimmy, what the _frack_ are you talking about?"

"The Divorce Petition!"

"_Divorce Petition_?"

"I saw it on your computer."

She covers her face with her hands, doesn't want to know why he's at her computer, remembers that she'd opened the document even while rising to come here.

x

"Ohhhh... _**GODDESS**_!" She glares up at him as the reverberation dies. "That was M. Lee _Hudson's _petition, _not mine_. I am not divorcing you, I thought we got through so much the day before _yesterday–_" they'd gone for hours on his murder and her gang rape, made a year's worth of progress and now this, "plus this _morning_" that'd been the final straw for her frazzled nerves, "but if you embarrass me like this again I can't always reach you but I'll do something that Gibbs wouldn't ever _consider_!"

"I'm sorry! I was just coming to see if you wanted to go to lunch."

"_Later_. Gibbs is on my ass about Hudson and when he gets back–"

"But–"

"We'll talk _later_, late lunch, but I am _not _talking to you in the ladies' room!"

She shoves him aside, yanks the door out of her way and stalks down the corridor back to her desk.

But as she sits down Tim asks: "Everything all right?"

Elbows on the desk, she lets her head fall into her hands, tries to shut out the world and wonders how her partner will react if she screams.

x

A minute later she's up and around to his desk. "Tim, where's your wife?"

"Uhh," Tim realizes, even caught short by the woman's intensity, that after nearly ten weeks of marriage no one has asked that particular question. This seems, however, to be his day for reporting where wives are. "She's at the National Cathedral, at a Conference." Rev. George Donaldson is Rector of St. Mary the Virgin Episcopal, Shav is Curate, so it's no guess who gets to spend the day in Diocesan meetings.

"Do you think she'd be pissed if I asked her something important?"

He hesitates longer. The meeting is the quarterly Diocesan Conference on Episcopal Charities at the National Cathedral, quite important but he doubts it's enough to make Shav scream, at least not at him. He picks up the phone receiver, dials her cell and signals Michelle to pick up her own phone and join the line while it's still ringing.

/Bail ó Dhia ort, a grá,/ Shav says very quietly, almost a whisper, wishing the Blessing of God upon him, her love.

"Are you busy?" This is indeed his day for stupid questions. Her tone may change for speaking to him as opposed to anyone else but she wouldn't be this soft unless she was in the meeting.

/There's a special kind of pain,/ she says and he can pick up the added stress in her brogue on certain syllables, /associated with being in a room with fifty people who all agree on the same thing and can't agree on how to do it. Talk fast so I can get back to the loving bickering./

"Need a favor, I think. Actually, _I _don't," he says, signaling to his partner.

"Mother McGee?" Michelle says.

/_A_! Michelle?/ She almost says it aloud, and the agents can hear that the surprise is not a pleasant one.

"Could you...?" She's frustrated, run out of words so soon. How to put everything into one sentence?

/Hold on./ A Carillon comes on, the tones of massive bells play the 'Our Father' with sonorous dignity as the agents exchange uncomfortable glances.

The bells reach all the way to 'as we forgive our debtors' before the priest's voice returns, this time in normal volume but some stress. /I have only a few moments. What is it?/

"Mother, you remember that thing we discussed, if things don't work?"

/Of _course_./

"Could you do it?"

/...You're sure? Because once done, it's not undone./

x

Tim watches the woman's face, sees a dozen strained emotions work on her before she takes a lung bursting breath, holds it tightly for ten seconds and releases it in a heavy gale. "Please do it."

/All right. It'll take me a few days to set up, so be very sure because you are _not _changing your mind./

"...I'm sure."

/Very well. Let me talk with my husband./

The agents know she knows it's an extension call. This is the priest's polite way of saying 'get off the line'.

"I'm here," Tim says when Michelle hangs up. He can see her distress, now mixed with honed guilt, sharper than ever, and can hear Shav's high heels click rapidly on marble floor.

/What part of important did you not get?/

"I–"

/A chuisle, I adore you but _I _will call _you_./ The sound of a door opening is cut in half as the line goes dead.

x

"Was she really mad?" Michelle asks, biting her lower lip, her expressive eyes telling all.

"Well, I won't need one of those things," he glances at the document still shining on her screen, the petition that had instigated this whole debacle, "but on the way home I think I'll stop at her favorite florist and hope he has shamrocks. Come on."

He won't ask her about the plan the women had discussed; she'd been evasive when he'd been on the line and from his conversation the other day with Green Lantern, he can figure it out.

xx

At the forward elevator, as they zip up their black Field jackets, caps already on heads, the doors open before them but not so the agents can board. A male agent stands beside a slight young woman with long black hair, anxious expression and a plasticized Visitor pass clipped to the pocket of her blouse.

"What are you doing here?" Tim asks more sharply than he'd intended and throttles back several points.

"Oh! Agen - Special Sagent - Agent McGee, I was hoping..." Karen Wetzel is already off the elevator so Tim just thanks the escorting agent, the doors close and he looks down at the flustered young woman.

"Why are you here? Have you more information on your father?"

"No, but I was hoping I could..." Her voice fades as she realizes this was the wrong answer.

"Didn't Agent Gibbs - and Agent DiNozzo - and the _Director _make it clear to you when they said 'you can't investigate your father's murder'?"

"What kind of NCIS Special Agent takes 'no' for an answer in an investigation?"

This try doesn't even rate a 'pathetic'. "The kind that obeys the Orders of a Senior Field Agent and the Deputy Special Agent-in-Charge _and _the Director. And you're _not _a Special Agent, you're not even a _Probie_."

x

If he'd slapped her she wouldn't look more stricken and her expression flares his guilt. For all his bristling at years of Tony DiNozzo saddling him with 'Probie', he'd never imagined using it on someone else in anger or insult. He looks to Michelle on his left.

"We're not investigating Commander Wetzel," she tells him. "We're investigating Machinist Mate Hudson; they're just from the same ship. It's a related case."

Appalled as he is by her betrayal - she's supposed to back him up - he stares down at her and barely hears Wetzel say

"Can't I help on this one?"

He turns back to the hopeful fledgling. "No you can't help on 'this one'."

"Come on, Tim," Michelle pulls his attention again; "we have _two _teams working this case and we're short-handed. Why not see what one more pair of eyes can see?"

Incredulous, he turns on his traitorous partner. Has whatever happened with Jimmy driven her to wild recklessness? "Because Gibbs will kill me the minute he finds out. No, the minute before then."

"It'll be like you have your own team."

She did not just say that. "My own _team_?"

"You'd be a great Senior Field Agent," Karen insists.

"Admit it, Tim; you'd love having two beautiful women do exactly as you command."

"I can't get either of you to do that _now_."

"We would if you were our Team Leader."

"Swear to be faithful to you, Captain," Karen says, pulling his eyes to her. She mimes crosses on each breast. "Cross my hearts."

When he'd first heard that first oath it precipitated a disaster on Star Trek the Next Generation's second episode, and her allusion to a time traveling Doctor doesn't inspire any more confidence.

"I'm going to need a cross, because Gibbs is going to murder me for even having this conversation." He turns on Michelle. "And if you say my wife could give me Last Rites–"

"Never."

x

As much as the thought of having his own team - even such an ad hoc one - is just appealing enough to _almost _balance his fear of Gibbs' response, Palmer's point about their resources is even more convincing. There are eight agents working on this case, four more on Chris Drakis from that other Aircraft Carrier, the Eisenhower, and they're understaffed - even discounting the Presit murder which, predating the others, pushes the 'first' and 'second' cases back one notch each. If another death occurs among the Reagan crew...

"All right." He points his finger almost on Wetzel's nose. "You; what I say, when I say it."

"Yes, boss."

It's almost haunting enough to halt him, but he turns on the duplicitous woman beside him. "And _you_... you make me regret this and I'll..."

"Jimmy already spanks me," she says helpfully.

He doesn't like the interested / speculative light that shines in Wetzel's eyes. "You won't enjoy the way I'll do it."

"Yes, sir."

"All right, you two get aboard and take this down to the garage."

Michelle's slightly confused. They're already fully equipped, even to black jackets and caps. "Are you taking the stairs?"

"No. When this car gets all the way down to the second sub-basement, I'm going to force the doors open and jump."


	16. The Wife's Tale

Chapter Sixteen  
The Wife's Tale

Gibbs, DiNozzo and David approach the Merlot style home of George and Marilyn Emeric where Mary Presit fled following her husband Robert's murder. The Presit apartment is an active Crime Scene, though now a no longer contested one. This home is hardly an apartment, more like a collection of mountain peaks about a central core.

Gibbs knocks hard on the front door, not quite loosening the peeling paint from the off-white wood.

The door is pulled open by a man almost as large as he is, but whose physique has had time to soften in the latter of his fifty plus years. George Emeric's ire fades when the introductions are made; he invites the trio into a long hallway that branches into a living room on the right.

The paintings on the wall are home done originals, two of them images of the earlier days of the women seated upon the couch.

x

"We're sorry for your loss," Gibbs says when he and Ziva are seated in chairs facing the couch.

DiNozzo, who has told George Emeric not to bother hunting up another chair, that he prefers to stand, actually prefers the slightly more mobile vantage that standing affords him.

"Thank you." Mary's voice is small, almost lost in the large room.

"I don't understand," Marilyn confesses. "I thought the Troopers were investigating Robert's death."

Gibbs isn't sure what the State Troopers thought they could do but "NCIS investigates all matters having to do with the Navy or Marine Corps."

"Oh." The grey haired woman turns to her daughter. "You should use something like that in your next film, dear."

"Mom, I'm sure these people aren't..." Her sigh testifies to the number of such conversations, but she addresses her exasperated answer to Gibbs. "I'm a movie Make-Up Artist," turns to her mother, "I _work _for Screen Images, they tell me what they want and I give it to them, film-ready, as quickly as possible, and I have absolutely no say in what movies are made."

"Yes, dear," Marilyn obviously doesn't believe the disclaimer but leans closer toward Gibbs. "She always says that to people. Tell me Agent Glibs, are you married?"

Gibbs doesn't have time to answer, Mary stands up and invites him into the kitchen. When he leaves DiNozzo and David and follows her across the hall and into the other room Mary turns, wipes her forehead and blows out frustration.

"I'm really sorry about that. Mom's been diagnosed with mild but increasing dementia. Sometimes it's a struggle for dad and I to–"

"Don't worry about it." In several ways the woman reminds him of Ducky's mother, whose occasional visits to NCIS are disruptive but memorable. "What about your husband?"

x

It immediately becomes clear that one tension was only masking another but she fights down grief behind hands that first hide, then scrub at her face. "My husband. He came home Tuesday, he had Leave from Tuesday evening to Thursday morning, then he had to go - was _supposed _to go - back to Norfolk.

"After we ... well, after I wel... that is–"

"Yes." He can read in so many things that she'd given him an intimate 'welcome home' after nearly a year at sea.

"I came here; I knew he'd want to see my parents Wednesday morning - he's particular about respect - so I wanted to be sure about how mom was, to remind her of who Rob is, you know?

"I was in a hurry to get back, he was to be off the Reagan for only 39 hours so we'd have less than that, I hurried back and–"

She chokes, unable to move, to speak, to breathe. Then the force grows so devastating she breaks, hands pressed to her face. "I FOUND HIM DEAD IN OUR BED!" she yells, and when she looks up tears stream from red eyes. "WE'D JUST MADE LOVE IN IT A LITTLE BEFORE AND HE WAS DEAD!"

Wailing, she barely manages to reach a chair and collapse into it, head down in her folded arms. Gibbs made no attempt to help her; Rule 46, 'never touch a crying woman' is, like most of them, the product of his own screw-up.

x

That woman hadn't been as broken in her grief as Presit is when Mike Franks had him interview her, but when he'd tried to comfort her with a hug she'd turned into a cross between a panther and a tornado. Though out of the Corps already, he was still too young in NIS to hit a woman, so Martine Joswig had had to wrestle her off him. For weeks he'd bourn the marks of that one-sided battle.

Franks had been particularly unsympathetic; he'd punctuated the report of her attack with a head slap.

x

Tony steps in through the open portal, pitches his voice to barely bridge the foot wide gap between them. "Parents are getting concerned, father doesn't think you're hurting her though."

"What did you get?" he asks as quietly, not sure DiNozzo can hear from inches away.

"Mother's kind of in her own space, you know, but the father did tell Ziva about the same as I overheard from your talk."

"Listening in again, DiNozzo?"

"Only always, boss."

"Good."

x

"Anyway, about a half hour after she left, she's on the phone to dad," he glances at the sobbing woman, "about how she is now. He's the one who called VST." To Gibbs' more intense look he adds "He never heard of NCIS."

"Guess Lollobrigida can't reach everyone." He walks past his luckless SFA, his message clear: 'I've had this one. When she comes to, get what you can. I'll hear.'

xxx

Michelle Palmer detests hospitals and Howard University's is no better than any. She's been in hospitals too often, either as a patient or visiting someone she cares, sometimes deeply, about. This time, though the person's a stranger, the same antipathy fills her and she's going to have to push it aside, box it up and concentrate on the coming mission. _Interview_.

Tim's on final approach into the huge parking lot, it's far too late to turn back, but she was here yesterday and doesn't look forward to the return visit.

That she must keep an eye on a pre-Probie helps, or hinders; she hasn't decided which. She'd talked Tim into including FLETC student Karen Wetzel in this interview, she'd felt sorry for the woman who'd lost her father to these killers and is a 'twixt/tween', neither a clear outsider to be sent away nor an Agent.

Tim had made Wetzel's performance her responsibility. Fair enough. She remembers what it's like to be the new girl - it's only been a year plus since she was attached to Special Agent DiNozzo's team. She knows how Wetzel feels, but is she ready to instruct, to fairly evaluate?

'Soon find out. Me and my f#% $ing big mouth.'

x

"How's your shorthand?" she asks the young woman beside her.

"Not quite atrocious," Karen admits, looking at the looming hospital as Tim searches the aisles for a parking space.

"We'll see. You're stenographer," she declares, passing to Wetzel the steno-pad and a pen even while secretly fingering the micro-recorder in her jacket pocket, the best one she could obtain months ago from Abby - any smaller and she'd lose it - because her shorthand _is _atrocious. 'I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid – yet.'

She'll see later what she is when she faces 'The Wrath of Gibbs'.

x

Tim glances back at the women seated behind him while he drives at dead slow speed through the overfull parking lot. Karen still wears her plastic Visitor's pass, he'll have her remove it before they reach the hospital but at least today she has it. The team had learned from Tony about the young woman's deception yesterday. He's still not thrilled to have her with him, but supposes it's better - slightly - than leaving her to run into Gibbs.

Still, she's here, he might as well make use of her. "Karen," he glances back again, "what is your parents' objection to your sister marrying Frank Norton?"

"Well, I only just met him, they weren't dating when I went to Georgia, but one thing mom and Anne bicker about is that he's frivolous."

"Frivolous."

"Mom says he spends money on stupid things."

"How stupid?" Like turning his black Trans Am into KITT? That'd be on his list.

"I don't know. I try to tune out their bickering. It's one of the hundred reasons I left."

"Mistake. A Special Agent keeps her ears, and her mind, open. Anything can be a potential clue in an investigation."

He can tell from her silence that she's either processing this or dying to protest that her family's incessant squabbles have little to do with an investigation, but all he gets back is "Yes, sir."

x

Ziva had related the tale of how Norton had converted his car, a mistake to do so in Tony's presence because it set him off on an enthusiastic recollection of a 1980's television show and a speculative romp about what other enhancements might be built into the converted Trans Am.

Tim can't condemn Norton for his choices on how he spends his money, not with a clear conscience when he and Shav have spent collectively over $400 on clothing for a convention / vacation that they'll put away after four days use until at least late October. Still, it does provide ample resource for speculation.

Gibbs has already ordered Tony to look into how Norton - and the Wetzel family - use their money but it never hurts to have an extra pair of eyes, if he can find the time to turn his in that direction. Norton had been a viable suspect when the case centered on William Wetzel alone. With Hudson's and now Presit's connections, Norton's speculative involvement gets reduced in rating but Tim will still not absolve him from all suspicion.

But for now they have an interview, and he's passed up enough open slots in the lot in his effort to get as close to the hospital entrance as possible. Time to park and get inside.

x

"All right, ladies," he says as he turns off the motor and turns to the two women in the back seat, "a simple witness interview, nothing you haven't done before." He pauses, reconsiders and turns more to Wetzel. "_Have _you done this before?"

"Oh, yes."

Something about her assurance makes him look more closely still. "What mark did you get?"

Hesitation. Admission. "Seventy." Something in her tone makes him look more intently. "Almost."

He sees the anxiety in Michelle's eyes go up a notch, can feel Gibbs' slap send his head bouncing across Operations and opens his door, uses the noise of his getting out to mask his whisper. "Angels and Ministers of Grace defend us."

xxx

When the Emeric's kitchen quiets Gibbs rejoins DiNozzo in their interview of Mary Presit, takes a seat at the table facing her.

"I'm sorry about that," she says quietly.

"Don't worry about it." He's known widows to leap from grief to insensate violence and, given those choices, he prefers tears. "What can you tell us about the other day?"

"I'd been waiting a long time, finally word came in. The Reagan was coming in and he'd be home."

Not quite that other day, but interviews are rarely direct and this one's going to be as circuitous as most.

"How much lead time did you get?" If he has to ease into it at her pace, he will.

"About a week. Rob had written two months ago - the Reagan's not quite stingy with email, but with so many people I knew I had to be patient. Messages had to be cleared before sending - I knew that already, I always knew that. He didn't even send it, it went through some Comm officer or something. It could've been a mass mailing for how personal it was, practically a bald statement."

"So when the ship came in?"

"I was there waiting, as close as I could get, with the other wives from Ronray. He finally got to me and we, well..."

"Ronray?"

"Oh, our group, all the wives, at least the local ones. Really, we all belong, but we're spread out all over. Not everyone could make it, I'd say there were about two hundred or three, I never really knew - cared."

"Ronray's the group Valerie Clausen runs?"

"I don't know. Runs I mean. She's, well, kind of a den mother to us, keeps us in touch. She gets way more news than anyone else, she has an on-line news blog we can tap into. Wives send in news too, about their lives, she posts that. Otherwise she tries to keep us communicating, encourages us to stay in touch, sort of that we're all in this together. Or we _were_."

She's about to break again, he asks the question quickly: "Do you all get together?"

"Not formally," she admits, using the thought to shore herself up. "I don't know how many there are in the bi-state area and DC, we get together as much of us that can. Support, commiseration... I guess I'll _really _be needing that now."

He's having greater trouble holding her together. "Tell us about that day."

"I– I– I–" she strains for the words. They won't come.


	17. Tim's First Team

Chapter Seventeen  
Tim's First Team

Tim leads, as he feels befits a Team Leader who has studied assiduously under the tutelage of the Master, his team into the hospital room. Two beds extend from the left wall, that closer to the door being rumpled but empty, indicating the occupant is either ambulatory or out for tests or treatment. He hopes the latter suppositions are correct, that he'll have time to conduct the private interview. He intends to be the one who'll run it; a reasonably fast in and out - then he'll answer to Gibbs.

A long interview?

x

'M for Michelle' Lee Hudson looks to be about nineteen - her records say twenty one and three years married - has a thoroughly bandaged head obscuring much of her blonde hair, likely shaved for surgery. Her right arm's encased in a cast with sling about her neck, her ulna's broken with compound fractures in two places by the tire iron that had killed her husband, and though he can't see it under blanket and pale blue hospital gown, Tim knows there'll be bands wrapping her torso to protect the three broken ribs. She's half seated on the raised bed, reclining but not enough to easily dose off.

"Mrs. Hudson," he begins after introductions and tries to mask his concerns. He prefers interviewing computers.

He's taken a position alone on her right side of the bed, the door to his back, thereby putting him away from the window and its potential distractions. His two partners are opposite him; _their _backs are to the third floor window. "We need to talk to you about what happened to your husband."

"Yes." Her tone, her distant stare, make him wonder if she's in shock

x

They'd already learned from a brief interview with the Attending Physician that she hasn't been given a sedative due to concerns about a possible concussion. He hopes her distance isn't due to shock, for things will be bad enough when they return to Headquarters if the interview goes incredibly well. Anything short of spectacular victory and he'd be tempted not to return, except Shav usually has a lot to say about dealing with temptation.

"What happened that night?"

"I was... I was asleep." She looks about the room, as though searching for something to focus upon. Finding nothing in the Spartan room beyond him but the wall, door and adjacent bed, she looks up to him. "Wil yelled, jumped - woke me up. Someone was... _hitting _him."

"Do you know who it was?" Sharp shake of her head. "Can you describe him?"

She turns away, but a new search of the room lights upon Michelle. "I know you," she says vaguely. "Do I know you?"

"Yes, ma'am," Michelle says. "I was here yesterday with another agent."

Hudson focuses on Karen next to her. "It... wasn't you."

"No, my name's Karen Wetzel. My dad was also on the Reagan with your husband _and he was murdered too_."

"Karen." Tim tries not to let any of his annoyance into his tone.

She looks up over Hudson. "Yes?"

"Later." He hopes she understands he doesn't mean 'you can tell her later' but that 'I'll deal with you later'.

x

"I don't know a Wetzel," Hudson says.

"Never mind," Tim says, dragging her attention back to him. When she looks right she winces, puts her left hand to her broken third, fourth and fifth ribs. "That's not important." He sees Karen's about to protest, likely with great outrage, but Michelle grabs her wrist - firmly. "You were telling us about the attack."

She takes a deep breath and immediately regrets it, her face crunches in pain and she clutches her side carefully though more firmly. "Can't you get me something?" she appeals in hissing whisper.

"Karen?"

She looks up to him. "What? Oh, yes, of course I will." She hands Michelle the steno pad and pen, goes around the foot of the bed and leaves, somewhat to Tim's relief. He knows she'll fail, but for the moment he can concentrate.

x

"Now," he asks slightly more firmly as Michelle takes up the task of recording the interview. The machine in her blouse pocket still records, but some people have issues with their words being electronically recorded, so the shorthand pad is a diversion. "What happened the other morning?"

"I was asleep, I woke up when Wil jumped - I thought he jumped, but this big guy was hitting him with a tire iron." Her fugue leaves her, driven under by emotion. "He kept hitting Wil, this big guy with tattoos and chains, long black hair that couldn't have been washed in days."

"What else?"

"He had a beard - I think - or I think I remember it. Yes, it was this big beard like something out of Grizzly Adams, and really big, like the..."

x

"You're doing fine."

"Yes she is," Michelle casts her vote from the other side of the bed, snaring her attention to her left for a moment.

"They keep saying Wil's dead. Is he?"

"I'm very sorry," Michelle says softly.

She fights for control, Tim can see how tenuous that control is. The door opens, he glances back at the sound as Karen enters, gives a small shake of her head, touches her left wrist and then places her right hand upon her own head before returning around the bed.

"They won't be able to give you more medication right now," Tim tells Hudson, "not while they're watching you for a possible concussion."

"Damn it, it _hurts_."

"Tim?" Michelle speaks up as Karen returns to her side. She hands her junior partner the steno pad. "May I?"

x

He's not entirely sure what to say. Gibbs would say 'stay out of this', Tony would be mockingly derisive of 'the Probette's hocus-pocus', Ziva would tell her not to interrupt, Abby would say 'go for it', Jimmy would support his wife - of course - while Ducky would watch in silence, anxious to learn no matter what happens.

Unfortunately none of them are here to decide. He is. "Try," he decides, figuring one day he'll determine - once and for all - if his partner's talent is real or ... what?

x

"Mrs. Hudson?" Michelle snares the woman's attention. She's steadfastly refused to think of her as Michelle Lee, the woman's middle name is her former last but that's just too much of a coincidence for her taste. She tries to make her eyes and voice say how sincere she is. "I can take away your pain, if you'll let me."

"How?"

Not an acceptance nor a refusal, and she's never been comfortable explaining herself to strangers - two at this moment. Instead Michelle places her hand, fingers spread wide, where she knows the pain of the broken ribs to be.

She relaxes, consciously relaxes all the muscles in her body, particularly her right arm and hand, the better to direct the energy, the power of the Goddess, through her body, down her arm, through her hand.

The power tingles in her, she feels the force of the healing energy flow into her, down her arm to well up in her hand. Then she imagines the broken bones below Hudson's flesh and gives an extra push.

The power of the Goddess flows from the Eternal into the wounded woman in a continuous stream and, in her soul's vision, she can virtually see the pure blue light shine from her palm into and through the woman's side.

Gradually Hudson relaxes under her touch but in her eyes there's mounting surprise as the pain quickly fades. Michelle doesn't have to ask when it's gone, she can see it in her 'patient's' eyes. She breaks the touch, takes a half step back, feels the unexpended eldritch power reside within her, bringing contentment with its own healing of whatever unknown ills she has.

x

"That's _incredible_," Hudson enthuses. "It doesn't hurt a bit any more. How did you do that?"

Michelle knows without looking that the inch-wide silver star within the circle, an engagement gift from Jimmy, is visible above her blouse's third button, though the silver cross within the inverted pentagon formed by the upright star's lines, though indicative of her dual Faiths, does throw somewhat mixed signals to those of either faith who don't know her.

"I'm Wiccan." Truthful but evasive of things she doesn't like to reveal, usually the answer is enough.

"What?"

In for a penny. "I'm a witch."

Hudson's eyes narrow. "There's no such things as witches."

Michelle looks to Karen, can only think to smile and shrug. Then she sees something in the younger woman's eyes she definitely doesn't want to be there. "No, that is _not _NCIS Advanced Training."

x

"Mrs. Hudson," Tim snatches her attention back to his side of the bed, "now that you're feeling better," and _some_day he's going to understand more than can be answered through Google and Bing, "can you tell us about the man who hit you?"

"He, err..."

It takes Hudson more moments to come back than McGee wants to give her and he doesn't like the continued fascination in Karen Wetzel's eyes.

"He was big," Wetzel says, as though looking back into a very cloudy past, "leather vest, tattoos, messy hair and beard, chest like Shwartznegger, arms big as ham hocks. When he saw me see him he started swinging at me. I held up my arm to protect myself..."

The result of that assault is two compound fractures of her ulna - the bones had pierced the skin of her arm; three broken ribs and that feared concussion. The EMTs who had responded to the scene had been very impressed that she'd managed to drag herself along the floor to the living room telephone without ripping herself apart internally and hemorrhaging to death.

"Had you ever seen that man before?" Shake of her head. "Do you know what he wanted, why he was there?"

"_He was there to kill us_."

x

"Mrs. Hudson," Michelle gathers the woman's attention, "how would you describe your relationship with your husband?"

"Long distance. Too long."

"But is it a happy one?"

Before she can answer, Karen says "Because there's a Divorce Petition on file that–"

"_Karen_!"

"THAT'S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!"

Wetzel flinches at Hudson's yell on the tail of McGee's sharp bite and when she glances at Michelle, the only one not mad at her, she realizes she provoked the two-pronged attack. "I'm sorry," she exclaims. She knows she's been careless, stupid, thinking in those moments more of her own parents so the news she'd learned from the witch on the trip out here had just slipped out.

"Wait outside," Tim commands from across the bed.

"But I–"

"Out... side."

x

When the student, who evidently needs additional classes in discretion, is gone McGee tries to salvage the interview. "Did you petition to divorce your husband?"

"Yes... but that was a long time ago." A little over a year, according to the Petition's header he'd seen when Jimmy had charged out of the bullpen. "I changed my mind. Yeah, we're not all hearts and flowers every - single - day, but we could work it out. Could've worked it out. Were _going _to work it out!"

"What was the problem?"

"Do you really _have _to know?"

Half of the marriage is dead. How much of it had died for her to contemplate divorce? "Yes."

x

Hudson holds out as long as she can, but neither agent will back down. "He hit me. A lot."

"Badly?"

She glares at him, unnumbered emotions fueling her. "Not _good_ly."

"Sorry, I–"

"I never wound up in the hospital, if that's what you mean." She looks around the room, at the cast encasing her arm, touches the bands that wrap her under her light blue gown. "That is, not until I tried to protect him."

"How did he hurt you?"

"_What_, you want all the sordid, intimate details? The force when I didn't want it in me, the hitting when I fought back? He didn't rape me _every _time, but it was the next best thing."

The outrage washes away in grief as quickly as it'd flared. "But he _promised _he'd get counseling," she sobs, "said he was talking out his problems, that this time he'd show me how he'd changed. And he had. He _had_."

"You didn't actually withdraw the Petition," Michelle reminds her. "You never pursued it but it–"

Hudson snatches the Call control from the rail on the bed, squeezes hard enough to nearly crush the plastic in her trembling hands. "LEAVE ME ALONE!" she screams. "HE'S DEAD! LEAVE ME ALONE ABOUT THAT! GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE AND _LEAVE ME ALONE_!"

Tim signals to Michelle, they leave before the duty nurse can reach the room.

xx

Karen Wetzel is right outside the door. McGee tries to take a moment, doesn't want to confront her as soon as the door is closed, but there aren't many moments before 'help' arrives. He steps to her so his words will be private, but his voice is low and intense. "Karen, Special Agent Gibbs has nearly sixty rules he uses to conduct an Investigation and I'm giving you your first one. Rule One: Never volunteer information to witnesses or suspects."

"But what if–?"

"_Ever_."

Karen looks like she wants to defy him or the imposition of his rule, he can see it in her eyes. Finally, however, she looks down.

"Yes, sir."

x

Tim knows there will be occasions when this rule - and others - must be set aside, but for well considered, strategic advantages. She'll learn when those times will be - when she masters the art of discretion.

For now, to use the vernacular of Ducky's fraternity, she's an Entered Apprentice. And it's his job, for now, to continue her training if she's ever going to grow to be a Fellow of their Craft, let alone a Master in her own right.

"While we're on the way back, keep that pad ready because I've got fifty more rules to teach you, and there _will _be a test."

"Yes, sir."


	18. Apparition

Chapter Eighteen  
Apparition

"Director?" Cynthia Sumner's voice through the desk intercom slices her attention.

Jennifer Shepherd looks up from the half read stack of files she'd ordered Agent DiNozzo to forward. "What is it, Cynthia?"

"Special Agent Sasha Nevelle is here to see you."

Shepherd admits it was inevitable; she'd backed Gibbs' decision and Nevelle has undoubtedly crossed swords with him by now. She hopes the woman doesn't come in dripping blood on the carpet. "Send her in."

x

When Nevelle enters she's not bleeding but her movements are deliberate, that precise think-and-then-act that masks and yet announces burning rage. She shuts the door but her body language screams she'd rather slam it behind her. She approaches the desk just as deliberately. "Director, why am I cut off this case?"

"You're not cut off. Your consultations with Agent Kelman are very–"

She sees where Nevelle's looking and considers shutting the file. There's no point; even upside down the woman can't possibly mistake her own handwriting.

"I asked Agent DiNozzo to forward me every file that includes any criminal record, no matter how slight."

"Jay walking is not a precursor to multiple murder."

"I am aware of that, just as I'm aware that the descriptions of our perps don't match anyone from the Reagan."

"Biker dude, messy beard, long unkempt hair, yeah, any idiot could see that."

Shepherd leans slightly forward and drops her voice from patient to perilous. "I _suggest_, Special Agent Nevelle, that you step outside and back come in again."

x

Nevelle's shoulders slam down instead. "I'm sorry, Director, but I spent two tours aboard the Reagan, the final six months of their last deployment and the eleven months of this one."

"This is why Special Agent Kelman so values your input that she has done nothing but work with you while her Team works the field. She's the best one to integrate everything."

"Why?"

Shepherd's surprised Nevelle has to ask that question, then realizes an SAA doesn't necessarily know the Field Teams, particularly when she's spent more than a year and a half at sea. It's fair; any reasonably intelligent agent can integrate data, but Nevelle's questioning the particular emphasis that's been placed on Kelman's ability. "She's a lightning calculator with an eidetic memory. Computers are fine, but if any human can spot a pattern or any other discrepancy first it'll be her."

"It was making me a little uneasy that in hours of talking she didn't write one thing down."

"If she ever had to, I might get concerned."

"And yet now I'm shut ou–" She quickly amends this to "I can't even get access to my own files."

Shepherd gathers the pile of folders, knocks them into a stack and presents them to her.

"Thank you," she takes them, "but you know what I mean."

"I know my field agents can't find a motive link between the victims and, for what I've read, neither can I. Yet my policy is quite clear and I still consider it valid. When a case hits a stone wall, and this one's rushing toward it at 60 miles per, new pairs of eyes on everything."

"And what have those new eyes seen?"

"Nothing."

xxx

Abby, riding the elevator down one level from her lab, decides she's spent far too much time this Friday afternoon staring into her microscope, doing things the old-fashioned way rather than directing the output to her plasma screen, because her eyes hurt and _now _she's discovered her last eye drop bottle is empty. But knowing Ducky and Jimmy do as much eye-intensive work as she does and, being two people with an inventory that never seems to run out, she knows Autopsy's the only place that she can get real relief. She squints to shield her eyes from the overhead fluorescents as she enters the Autopsy suite and the pneumatic doors slide shut behind her.

"Ducky, do you have any eye drops? I'm about to go blind from staring into my microscope."

"Here, let's have a look," a woman's voice, definitely not Sammy's - she's at the Renaissance rehearsing for tomorrow's performance and isn't even supposed to be here - says from a foot away. It's enough of a surprise for Abby to force herself to look up into the face of the long-dead Kate Todd!

x

Abby shrieks, topples off her high black and red boots to land hard on her butt. Terror overwhelms pain as she scuttles backward, crab-wise, from her murdered friend. Her heel catches the hem of her white lab coat, almost chokes her as it yanks her neck to the floor. She can't escape before the apparently startled corpse reaches for her and she screams so shrilly Gibbs _must _hear her four stories up.

Ducky runs in from behind Kate. He'd burst out past the silver door of the supply room between her screams but, amazingly, he goes around rather than through the ghost.

"DUCKY! DO YOU SEE HER?" Abby stabs toward the apparition, which she's starting to realize is more lightly colored, light brown hair rather than black, and she's wearing a red dress with cleavage the likes of which Abby'd never seen Kate wear in life but what can be expected of phantoms with heavenly fashion sense?

"Oh dear no," Ducky is nowhere near the panic he should have at having the ghost of his late friend - maybe he's more comfortable with the dead than she's ever appreciated; to her knowledge he's never blinked at Michelle Palmer being a Witch - appear in his autopsy suite. "I was so careless. Abby, this is _not _Caitlin Todd."

His definite, almost admonishing tone breaks through her terror, switches her brain back on. "It's not?"

x

Ducky reaches for her, she grasps his hand and he boosts her off the floor. "No, it is _not_."

"I'm really sorry," the not-Kate says. "I didn't mean to scare you."

"Abby, this is my colleague from Boston, Doctor Maura Isles."

"Hello," Todd/Isles says.

"Hi," Abby manages to get out, and the world only now resumes its rotation in the right direction.

"Abby, Doctor Isles is a Medical Examiner with the Boston PD. She'll cover for me here during my vacation in Edenborough next month."

Things are starting to make sense; in another few moments she'll catch up with the world "But–"

"Doctor Palmer is NCIS' Deputy Medical Examiner on paper and in practice here," he explains with seemingly indefatigable patience something he's probably said numerous times already, "but he is an MD, _not _yet a Forensic Pathologist until he completes that phase of his training quite some time hence. He may not legally take over the ME duties, so he shall assist Doctor Isles in my absence."

x

Abby, now that she's no longer frightened out of her wits - it's one thing to believe in ghosts and long to see one, quite another thing to actually do so - remembers her manners and extends her hand. "Hello."

Isles grips her hand, it's actually quite a solid grip for a not-quite-ghost. "Hello. I'm sorry to have scared you. I actually forgot that I look like your friend."

"No, it's okay." Abby looks more closely. Except for the lighter shade of hair "But not 'look like'. You really could be her twin. I've never known anyone so identical. I mean, except for monozygotic twins."

"Super-identical."

"But you're not Kate's sister." They've already met one who resembles her hardly at all.

"That I know of," Isles admits.

"What are you, adopted?" She never expects Isles to say

"Yes."

"Then you could _be _Kate's monozygotic, super-identical twin sister!"

x

Ducky recognizes very well the dangerous revving up of Abby's enthusiasm. "Abby, Doctor Isles–"

"Maura, please, Ducky."

"and Kate are _not _related. I first met Maura at a Pathologist's Convention some years ago."

"Why didn't you tell us?"

"_Because _it was less than three months after we'd lost Kate, and I decided that there would be no benefit whatsoever in lancing wounds that had barely begun to heal by informing any of you of the existence of a virtual twin of our too-recently deceased friend. Then, over the intervening years, I forgot about it myself until today; and the lack only hit home, as it were, when I heard your screams."

His tone ends in an unvoiced appeal for forgiveness, not that she would ever consider not doing so but "Well, how can you be sure that they're not sisters?"

x

Ducky's expression is pure embarrassed guilt. "Because on our first day together I did succumb to the temptation to ascertain the situation for myself." Under both their stares, he can't escape admitting the rest. "I obtained a DNA sample and had it tested at an independent laboratory at my own expense. Despite the physical appearance, there are insufficient congruencies to allow a familial relationship."

"Oh."

"You used a sample of my DNA...?"

"Your fork from the meal we shared together at the Convention Center dining room and I quite apologize for doing so without permission. I can only plead guilt in that it was less than three months since we lost Caitlyn Todd and our encounter at the convention disturbed me more at the time than I myself realized. I assure you I destroyed all record of the test after I had my answer."

"I'm not mad, Ducky. I'd've given you the sample because I was just as curious. Your story of a deceased, near identical–"

"Super-identical," Abby cuts in.

"twin made me wonder."

"Yes I do apologize, but after I'd had my answer, guilt over what I'd done prevented me from–"

She holds up her hands. "Enough. No more guilt, Ducky. Let's forget it." She turns to Abby. "And I hope this won't be a problem in our working together next month."

"Oh, no, I'm good. I promise not to scream at you again."

"I'd appreciate that."

"And I'll spread the word, let people know what to expect."

"That'd be better." Isles doesn't want to go through her first days in the Autopsy suite dealing with freaked-out people at every first encounter - particularly as the vast majority of those she'll meet will be armed.

x

"How long will you be in Scotland?" Abby asks. She knows she knew but now finds that the answer has fled her brain with probably a ton of other information.

"A fortnight. I shall return on the third Sunday in June."

"I'm half-surprised you didn't ask Jordan to cover for you." She knows now that she's been so busy she's fallen woefully behind; she hadn't even had time lately to ask this before. Metro's Medical Examiner Jordan Hampton has worked several times at NCIS during convergent cases and the ME pair has grown quite close personally as well as professionally.

"I could not ask her to 'cover' for me as she will accompany me."

"_Really_?" This she _has _to hear. She's definitely fallen woefully behind if a plan like this could escape her attention. But before Ducky can continue, trapped as he is into answering her delighted question, the main doors slide apart behind her.

"Duck, you got an answer on that–?"

x

Abby turns at Gibbs' cutoff and she knows it's not because she's here rather than in her own domain. She sees Gibbs isn't staring at _her_, nor at Ducky's pained expression. She remembers her so-recent promise to alert her friends and wishes Gibbs had given her half a chance. "Gibbs, this isn't Kate."

"I know."

"Of course you do." His Rule Sixty-something is probably 'never believe in ghosts'. She'd had his refusal to believe in the hinky and the outré driven home quite forcefully since the first 'flying saucer affair' and too often since. "This is Doctor Maura Isles, she'll sub for Ducky next month."

"I know."

"Is there anything you don't know?"

"Why you're here."

"Eye drops."

"Second shelf on the left end," Ducky says and Abby hurries across the room with that run-scuffle probably only possible in extra-too-tall black and red elevator boots.

"Don't leave," Gibbs says. "I'll get your report now."

"Be right back," she assures him from the open silver door, "when the world stops revolving clockwise."

This is enough to halt him even after the door eases shut.

x

"Oh, contrary to popular misconception," Isles tells him, "the Earth does not revolve clockwise when viewed from zenith to nadir. It actually revolves anti-clockwise, which is why celestial objects appear to rise in the east and set in the west."

"Is that so?"

"Yes. In fact, the revolutionary direction of the sun and almost all celestial objects in our solar system is anti-clockwise, the sole exceptions being the planets Venus which _does _have a clockwise spin and Uranus, which actually rotates at a 90 degree angle relative to the other planets, so it seems to be laying upon its side - though its spin, based upon magnetic poles, is still anti-clockwise. These two exceptions have long caused dissention among some astronomers about whether these bodies did, in, fact, originate in our solar system."

"Yes," Ducky assures him, "I suspect Abby's reference stems from her personal disorientation upon encountering someone she thought was the resurrected spirit of Caitlin Todd."

"Yes," Isles agrees, "it's actually a common phenomenon that relates to a dissociation of perception and the processing of sensory impulses following an emotional shock or upheaval. The neurons in the brain have actually been known to misfire, to retrieve a memory coded on our RNA rather than stored in our short-term or recent long-term memory, so we can mistake a memory or a strong associative perception for that of a current event."

Gibbs turns his scrutiny down upon her. "How long you going to be here?"


	19. Slap Shot

Chapter Nineteen  
Slap Shot

"Be nice, Gibbs," Abby admonishes from the Autopsy Suite's silver supply room door.

Gibbs turns to her, displeased by the tone but since it's Abby... She holds a small white bottle in her hand but the ease of her gaze tells him she's already used it.

"I'm always nice." He ignores Ducky's expression, doesn't care about Maura Isles'. In fact, the less time he spends looking at her - and she'll be NCIS' Supply ME for two weeks - oh, joy - the better he'll like it.

Though she's not the same woman, he can hardly look at her without seeing Kate, and when he looks at Kate all he can see is the woman he could neither protect nor save.

Abby shakes her head. "What about that time when–?"

"What about your report?"

"Want to start with Wetzel or Hudson?"

"I'd rather take them in order with Presit."

"Whosit?"

"PO1 Robert Presit, Communications aboard the Reagan."

She appeals not to the florescent lights. "Where's this going to end?"

"It _ends _with Hudson. Captain Clausen's pulling everyone back, all Leaves cancelled. Meantime, DiNozzo's delivering the Presit evidence boxes now."

"Boxes? I'm barely into Hudson's stuff. I'm great, Gibbs, but Scotty's the Miracle Worker."

"Not interested in miracles, that's McGee's line. I'm interested is science."

"Which McGee's line?" she asks with a saucy smile she doesn't feel, feels instead she's got to ease the pressure somehow, especially in the face of so much rapid fire death. She's known Tim to pull off some technological miracles, but the look in Gibbs' hard eyes warns her against attempting any more levity.

Ducky doesn't care about levity. "Who is Mister Presit?"

"The first of the Reagan casualties; throat slit two nights ago, a couple hours before Wetzel was poisoned."

"Technically it wasn't poison," Abby counters, but quickly backs down from Gibbs' hard look.

x

He doesn't want to recount the shell game the Virginia State Troopers used to keep NCIS from learning about the murder in 'their' jurisdiction, these are his friends - and a stranger who needs neither information nor insight. "Was the Rocuromen from the hospital?"

"Rocuronium. More to ask 'was it from the same batch from the manufacturer?'" She sees he won't. "Rocuronium is marketed in the US as Zemuron, and the manufacturer may make each batch," she holds up her thumb and forefinger almost touching, "just the teeny tiniest weeniest bit dif–"

"Abby." He has less time for humor than for levity and that's not humor.

"The stuff that killed Commander Wetzel did _not _come from Monroe. The killer brought it with him."

"And there wasn't a knife missing from the Presits' place," he tells her, "at least not as far as anyone can tell." The Forensics team arrived before they finished and collected every knife and other sharp object in the apartment. Though that's hardly a conclusive conclusion, not until Mrs. Presit can be questioned in more detail - and not by VST - he doubts the Hudsons kept a tire iron in their bedroom.

x

"The Reagan crew's dropping like flies, Duck. Captain Clausen's pulling his people back to the ship but that'll just cut out the new cases. We need to know how these guys are targeting the crew and why."

"So in addition to three autopsies you are ordering up three psychological ones."

"Presit's autopsy's already done, courtesy of the VST ME, you only have to collect it, so it's only two and three."

"Thank you very much."

"If you need my help, Ducky, I'm more than happy," Maura Isles assures him.

"Thank you, my dear, I shall certainly use you very thoroughly." Her grin makes him replay the words, much to his embarrassment. "That is, I–"

"Quit while you're ahead, Duck," Gibbs advises.

"Indeed, while I still retain one."

x

Gibbs turns to Abby, to introduce the next subject before anything more goes wrong with the old ones. "Second thought, I'm going to need that miracle from you. Who are we dealing with and how are they getting to their targets?"

Abby shrugs. "What have we got?"

"Presit's murderer had a small window of opportunity, less than two hours, to get in and out while the wife was at her parents'. We don't even have a description, just prints and trace. Wetzel's killer got into a hospital after hours and everyone who saw him took him either for a workman on a 24/7 construction project or for a hospital employee since in the security picture he was wearing a medical smock when he got into Wetzel's room. Hudson's guy got all the way into the bedroom and beat him and his wife to a pulp with a tire iron. How are they doing it?"

"What do our three victims have in common?" Ducky asks.

"Lieutenant Commander in charge of the night shift, Machinist's Mate and a PO1 in Communications."

"A seemingly eclectic lot indeed."

"Oh, they're connected somehow, if not on duty then off, but piecing through Nevelle's reports takes too much time. Clausen had her turn over everything on the crew so that's what she did." He could wish for her to have been less thorough, but since they don't know what they're searching for there was no way to filter it. His team faces hundreds of hours of reading and sorting and collating and...

The pneumatic doors slide apart and Jimmy Palmer stops dead when he sees the quartet. The blood falls from his face.

"Oh, this isn't Kate," Abby hurries to assure him.

"N - no kidding. Doctor Isles?"

"That's me. Doctor Palmer?"

"I - I guess so."

"Jimmy, where have you been?" Ducky dreads going through this another few score times and wishes he'd been more forthcoming with general information. He'll order his protégé to send out a mass email about his vacation and temporary replacement - later, after he finds out where said protégé has been.

"I took those specimens to Abby."

Abby looks to her friend, about to say 'don't use me as an excuse' but she doesn't have to say it. Ducky already has his left sleeve pulled back.

"That was over an hour ago."

x

"I... took a walk." He nearly cringes under the gaze but rallies. "Down along the Anacostia."

"The Anacostia?" The river does run right beside the Yard, but

"We didn't have a body!"

"All right, Jimmy. You are certainly entitled to breaks - and if there is anything to discuss on this matter we shall do so later. For now, I would appreciate it if you would contact the Virginia State Troopers and obtain a copy of the Autopsy Report on a..."

"Robert Presit," Gibbs supplies, spells the last name.

"Yes, Doctor."

x

When Jimmy crosses the room to the computer open on the desk, Ducky wonders just how much he should reveal to Isles about the younger man's ongoing problem. Perhaps a conference on the subject is in order.

"–uck?"

Abby's touch on his arm finishes bringing him back into the room. "Yes, Jethro?"

"What can you tell us about the killers?"

"Ah - you want the Psychological Autopsy _now_."

"Take what I can get."

"Well... Having only two murders to work with thus far, it does seem evident that these are coordinated attacks. You have a black man attired as a hospital staff member wielding an excessive amount of Rocuronium, an almost stereotypical Caucasian biker replete with tattoos and more hair and beard than necessary and armed with a tire iron–"

"And an unseen perp with a knife."

"I can make no assumptions about him but the other two... It is, as you know, uncommon for related murders to be committed by disparate individuals so, just as with the victims, you are seeking how the killers are related."

"Got that covered."

Ducky's left only with spreading his hands. "I have nothing as yet to tell you on this two day old case."

Gibbs looks to Abby, she's less uncomfortable admitting "I've got a ton of evidence, you say Tony's brought me more. I'll let you know."

"I have the autopsy report," Jimmy announces from the small side desk.

"Let's have it."

x

Jimmy's used to reporting to his mentor, not to so varied a group, and said reports are usually couched in technical terms, language not generally understood on first telling, so he half dreads imparting the information to Gibbs.

"The ME, Doctor Walter Messina, reports - I have the report copied to a file - that the cut was made with a straight edged weapon, but that it was a straight cut rather than about the throat. And there were at least three cuts, that the killer kept having to try. The trachea was 60 percent severed, 40 percent to the carotid. Essentially Robert Presit choked to death, drowned in his own blood."

"Perp wasn't very efficient," Gibbs concludes.

"Few first time killers are," Ducky agrees, "but I'll have to see the body for myself to determine if we have hesitation cuts or something else."

"But you're right, Doctor Palmer," Maura says. "A straight across cut isn't efficient at all."

xxx

Tony DiNozzo looks up from his monitor to his teammates. Gibbs is downstairs but he can't wait to share this victory. "Hey Probalicious, look at this."

He sees the daggers in Ziva 'Probalicious' David's eyes but she keeps them from her voice. "What is it, Tony?"

"Feast your eyes on this."

Fortunately the feast appears on the plasma screen, but it's so dark she can't make out any details.

The screen is filled with a series of occasionally moving shadows. "What?"

"Wait for it. Wait for it... There!"

The shadow frozen on the screen is man shaped, but so dark it's just a black-on-black silhouette. She refuses to say 'fine, I shall put out a BOLO on Lamont Cranston'.

"You mean to tell me," she demands as she crosses the bullpen for a better view, "that you identified a killer from that?"

"Oh no, my little dragon flower, that's just the first phase. Here's the second." Another image appears, this one slightly lighter but definitely the same man, this time going in the opposite direction. "Phase three is yours, the Probette's and the Great Probino's. I can't deny you the true thrill of the hunt."

"Deny, Tony," she demands. "By all means deny!"

"Okay," he points the remote control at the sensor, rapidly presses the buttons and gradually the brightness increases, the contrast sharpens until they're looking at two extreme images, still too dim and now too manipulated to be clearly distinguished.

"That is the best you can do?" She isn't surprised, there's only so much that manipulating brightness and contrast can do, but she would not want to show this image up and down any streets looking for a hit.

"Oh ye of little faith. I did the heavy lifting, now when he gets back I'll turn it over to the McGeester for the spit and polish."

"Just what do you classify as heavy lifting?"

"There's two outdoor bank ATM cameras in the Presits' neighborhood, one had a streetlight nearby but nothing we could use. This one is, how would you call it, dark, but it's four blocks from the apartment and is the only one that had a person who walked toward _and _away from the Presit place within our window of opportunity."

She's impressed despite herself. "Not bad, Tony."

"Heck, when you've got it..."

"You learn to quit while you are ahead."

Tony doesn't mind, he's riding high. "Think McKodak can get us something to show on the streets?"

"We shall soon see." But her return to her desk is cut short by Gibbs' arrival.

x

The first thing Gibbs sees on enters the bullpen is a grinning Tony DiNozzo. Whenever one of his people has something to grin over on a case, he wants to hear the reason now.

"I've found a suspect in Presit's murder."

"How?"

"When we were out there to pin the Troopers' ears back; that is, when you pinned them back–"

"Get on with it."

"Getting on with it. I noticed a First Metro bank on the corner with street side ATMs, therefore cameras, in a street side slot. Not having McHacker or Probette Law, I had to do the job myself. I used the hour forty five window of opportunity we had from Presit's widow and looked for anyone passing the cameras both coming and going. Here's what I found."

Gibbs regards the two still images. While the street is changed only in the degree of light, a man is photographed left and right profile.

The image is of a tall white man with short black hair, two to three days beard growth, sweatshirt and worn, faded and patched jeans.

"You got an ID?"

"You'll have to spend longer at Ducky's than that. I do have Facial Recognition running, but I need McGee to clean up the images if we want a hit this month."

"The minute you know."

"Ah aims to please," he assures Gibbs, restores his attention to further computer searches.

x

When Gibbs turns back to his desk he sees again the vacant desks across the open space. 'Where the hell are they?' "Ziver, McGee report in?"

"I shall check." The check doesn't last long. "He left me a voice mail; he and Michelle are going to Howard University Hospital to investigate a discrepancy in Mrs. Hudson's testimony."

Gibbs isn't surprised McGee passed the message on to her. After the 'computer guru', one of the myriad monikers DiNozzo tags him with, had broken romantic ties with Abby, he and the Mossad Liaison had formed a close bond - far too frequently at the hips - before the man had begun dating the woman who would ultimately become Mrs. McGee.

His own skill with the more obscure features of his phone, like voice mail, is less than impressive even to himself and McGee knew they three were conducting their interview of Presit's widow. Only for a significant development in the case would he break in on that.

xx

Half an hour later, Gibbs looks up from the nineteenth file from the tower on his desk when he hears the ring of the elevator down the corridor. The bell never changes, there's no way any part of the machinery could identify its occupants, yet he always knows when members of his team arrive, in this case McGee and Palmer fresh from their interview.

But when they enter the bullpen his anticipation of progress - they hadn't called so their news isn't earth-shaking - is soured, for they'd left as a pair and return a trio.

"Your own Team, McGee?" He'd given no permission for Wetzel's daughter to join them, but since she's here he'll grill her for more details on the Commander's murder. But something of the depth of McGee's guilty start - and Palmer's face has always been a roadmap to the truth - tells him his greeting carries a higher tab than they'd expected to pay.

The women flank McGee before DiNozzo's desk, Wetzel on the right near the entrance. Closer to an escape?

"Er, how did you know about that?" As DiNozzo comes out and around from behind his desk, trying to get a better view of McGee's discomfort?, he gives the guilty man look Number Seven, his 'I always know' expression. "Boss, I can explain." Subtle shift into Number Three: 'Now'. "Michelle found M. Lee Hudson's Divorce Petition, it contradicted her testimony earlier that they had a happy marriage. We went to question her on it." Shift to Number Six: 'You left without telling me something important?' "Err, on the way we met Karen." A glance to the left, as if anyone needed clarification? "Karen Wetzel, Commander Wetzel's daughter." Number Two: 'Stick to what I _don't _know.' "She convinced me that she could be an asset in the Hudson case because she can't work her father's."

x

There's no expression that says "She can't 'work' _any _case, McGee; she's not an Agent." He's going to need a new Rule, number fifty-two, one he'd never imagined he'd need: 'Never bring a _guest _on an Investigation.'

"Yes, I realize that," McGee says, "but she did make a contribution to the case."

Michelle, on McGee's right before the plasma screen, gapes up at her partner, her expression enough to spur Gibbs to ask "What contribution, McGee?" Even Wetzel's face asks this, and McGee's extended hesitation confirms the failed bluff. Getting up from his desk, Gibbs crosses to the crowded area before DiNozzo's desk and delivers a particularly sharp wake-up call to the back of the foolish agent's head.

His left cheek explodes in stinging pain, the loud slap half-deafens him before the 'crack' finishes reverberating through Operations.

x

Karen Wetzel realizes, as time stops around her, that she hadn't thought, hadn't even considered thinking.

Special Agent McGee is her team leader, though if only by her gentle manipulation, but fiery outrage is deluged by cold wet fear, for this large man she's hit - and the imprint of her palm and fingers is livid on his face - is her team leader's team leader.

He's the Deputy Special Agent-_in-Charge_, the number two Agent in the mid-East Coast - and she's just slapped her career away.

x

Gibbs stares, incredulous, down at the would-be agent, watches her terror mount.

His team sees only that he doesn't move, yet they can see, second by second, small tremors like the rumbles of a mounting earthquake in his arms. He ignores the stunned DiNozzo at his far left. "Da-veed."

"Gibbs?" Ziva's impressed by the lack of passion in his voice but she knows his fire is all to the physical and he contains it behind blast shields that could stop a planet-wrecker.

"Get this woman out of this building."

x

Ziva comes out from behind her desk, grabs Wetzel's arm, levers her toward the elevator, very conscious of saving her life even if Wetzel herself is oblivious.

The car takes too long. Two seconds, three, an eternal four. "_David_. Come back."

Ziva looks to the bullpen and actually considers refusing. To obey, she'd lead a very defenseless lamb-trainee back to a very messy slaughter - but there's no anger in Gibbs' manner.

Uncertain, feeling she'll have the girl's execution on her conscience forever, she draws the apprehensive apprentice back into the arena, to a very disquieting lion. She looks at Wetzel when they arrive, sees terror and doom in her eyes.

x

Heart pounding a fast bass drumbeat in her ears, Karen feels she's staring up at Darth Vader's black helmet, no more able to read this man's eyes than she would the Sith Lord. Of course, Vader never had a too slowly fading handprint on his cheek. "Sir, I'm _sorry_! _Please_, let me _explain_!"

Vader raises his hand, much as he did when first confronted in the Death Star's Conference Chamber. Will he use two fingers to choke her - or _crush _her larynx?

"Yes, sir?"

"Have you any idea," Gibbs asks, his voice deadlier for its lack of intonation, "how long it's been since an agent dared to hit _me_?"

'Dad, I'll be with you in a second,' and the thought of her father waiting for her across the cosmic divide almost chokes her; but if she's already banned from employment at NCIS or any other agency and two seconds from dying, it _won't _be with a whimper. "Much too long?"

She's amazed not to be plastered all over the distant wall behind her. In fact, the rock face softens.

x

"Perhaps so. All right, Wetzel, since you're doing Kelman's team's work, go brief them, bring back what they've uncovered, then attach yourself to that team until further notice."

"Ye–" She winces at her squeak, swallows and tries again, hopefully less embarrassingly. "Yes, sir." She turns and starts away, to put as much distance between herself and the towering man - and manages only eighteen inches.

"Wetzel."

She stops, swallows hard enough to feel it in her toes, and turns around. "Yes, sir?"

He steps up to her, and she has to crane her neck but it's only not _quite _like looking up Mount Olympus at Zeus' lightning-wreathed visage.

"I see fear in your eyes."

She swallows again, but now she's totally dry and it hurts. "Yes, sir," she croaks.

"_DON'T _let me see it again."

x

Gravel cuts her dry larynx as she tries again. "No, sir."

"Be back with the report in twenty. _Move_."

She's back to the elevator - though she didn't run it was like walking in a warp bubble. But as she reaches for the button - up or down? - she realizes she does have only twenty minutes for the double reports and has absolutely no idea where 'Kelman's team' is headquartered - and that he knows it.

She looks back, but it's Michael Crawford's 'Phantom' whose voice echoes through her skull. '_So _- it is to be war between us.'

But her determination to make her ancestors proud in that war is shaken because the Phantom's not done. 'If these demands are not met, a disaster beyond your imagination will occur.'

'_Once more_,' the chorus agrees.

x

Gibbs turns and is quite displeased to see four thunderstruck faces staring at him. "This case isn't going to solve _itself_." They scatter for their desks and he takes a moment to rub his cheek hard.

In the first second his automatic response was going to be to lay Wetzel out flat. It was only by exercising all his control that he forced the anger back, letting the Supervisor come to the fore. Wetzel will do okay with Kelman's team on the Hudson case, and in the meantime she can be watched.

He'd been explicit with his question. No agent in NCIS would dare to raise a hand against him, so rather than being angry - for long - he'd been intrigued by her daring, or is it more?

Palmer, when she was Lee, had intrigued him when she'd lied to his face to get attached to a case, and she's growing, after a slow and rocky start, into a viable agent. Will Wetzel?

He'll watch and see.

x

"So, Probie-wan, what's it like to have your own team?"

"Give it a rest, will you, Tony?" Tim appeals, appalled by DiNozzo's timing. He hadn't thought they'd done badly at all, yet he's just had disaster scaled down to a head slap and doesn't want Gibbs reminded.

"You do not need to know," Ziva interjects from behind her own desk. "You have had your own team, and recently turned down another."

"But I want to know how it was for the Pro-bambino. Come on, Tim, what was it like to have the Probette and the Munchkin under your command?"

But it's Gibbs that answers. "Wetzel's closer to her own Field Team than McGee is."

x

Tim turns, stunned, and even Tony, Ziva and Michelle stare. Gibbs isn't one for gratuitous insults - ever - and that one really _hurt_.

"Boss?"

"_What_, McGee?"

"Well," he tries to wrench the dagger from his heart, but it's jammed in too tightly. "I mean I got - we got - information on the case. We may have crossed some line but we're sharing with Melanie and her team so I don't see any loss."

"And?"

"And I don't think I deserve that insult."

Gibbs gets up and crosses the bullpen, leans over his desk. They're half a foot away. "Oh, yeah?"

"Come to think of it, we did a _darn good _job and I didn't deserve that head slap either."

"No?"

"No. To say a Trainee is closer to being a Team Leader than I am, that really hurts."

"So what?"

Tim had only thought he was stunned before. "I think I'm a good agent. I did a good job as 'team leader'. I think I didn't deserve that insult or that slap."

"McGee, do you know _when _you'll get into the running to make team leader?"

"When?"

Gibbs leans in, they're nose to nose and his tone is volcanic. "When you learn to hit _back_!"


	20. On the Air Breathless

Chapter Twenty  
On the Air Breathless

"What about the divorce, Palmer?" Gibbs asks when he returns to his desk.

Michelle's inclined to turn the lead on the report back to her partner, he'd been in charge of this latest phase, but Special Agent Gibbs seems done with Tim and she's not sure if protocol or obedience is wiser. Given the choice, obedience does seem safer.

"Sir, Michelle Hudson–"

"Not Michelle Lee Hudson," Tony baits.

Cantonese doesn't have the best cutting inflection but Mandarin is just right, at least enough to earn a chortle from Ziva, an annoyed but mystified look from Agent DiNozzo, a brief thumbs-up from Tim and a free pass from Special Agent Gibbs.

"Sir, she filed but didn't pursue a Divorce Petition but cited spousal abuse as the initial cause and a hope for reconciliation as her motive for inaction." She turns her attention to her screen where the fateful document which had set Jimmy off to his panicked search for her flares back at a touch of her mouse. "However... I didn't... get much chance... to pursue... a cross... check... before... we... left... and now... yes, Mrs. Hudson filed the petition with the Court twenty-seven days before Wilfrid Hudson deployed aboard the Reagan and let it lapse when the time limit had expired. Since last year there's been no activity related to it."

"Do you think she changed her mind?"

"Sir, are you asking for my gut feeling?"

"Yes."

"No. She said she did, she sounded really sincere, but there's a statement attached to the file. Sir, if any man treated me the way she reported he treated her I'd kick him to the curb."

"Should Jimmy be watching his ass?" Tony asks. She considers replying, but instead swivels her chair ten degrees further right.

x

"What about the day he came back?" Gibbs asks.

"She says they had sex, my _impression _is it was consensual, and she woke up to a big man with 'leather vest, tattoos, messy hair and beard, chest like Shwartznegger, arms big as ham hocks' clubbing her husband with a tire iron. When she tried to intervene, he turned his attack upon her."

Gibbs picks up his phone, presses the intercom button.

/You're on the air on Station 4RNZX with the fabulous Abby Sciuto. Can I have your name and where you're calling from?/

"No. But you can give me your report on Hudson's place."

/You mean more than I gave you at Ducky's?/ He lets his silence answer. /All right, of the fifty seven distinct fingerprint samples - she must throw _some _parties - I haven't had time to run more than six, and AIFIS doesn't give me a felony match on them./

"How long for an in-depth check on all of them?"

/A week. No less./

"Anything new to tell me on Wetzel?"

/CoD unchanged, he suffocated because his diaphragm stopped contracting and his heart relaxed. It's about the most straightforward Cause of Death I've had in weeks: Rocuronium./

"What about Hudson?"

/Okay, I take back what I said about Wetzel's COD, Hudson's definitely the most straightforward. Skull bashed in. You bring me the tire iron, I'll name you the match./

"And Presit?"

/Okay, I take back what I said about Hudson's CoD. Presit's definitely–/

"Abby."

/What do you want from me, Gibbs? There are no mysteries down here; Rocuronium, smashed skull, slit throat though Ducky, Maura and I/ how'd she go from a terrifying apparition to 'Maura' so fast? Then again, this is Abby, /all agree his slitter was an amateur. These guys are showing no creativity at all, well, except for the Rock. This isn't succinylcholine, vampire bites or Flunitrazepam. These guys numbers 1 and 3 simply went for the jugular, except in Robert Presit's case the guy didn't, he just cut the wind pipe./

"Trace evidence?"

/About six boxes of it, including vacuuming Hudson's rug from door to bedroom. Templeton's become so thorough I swear he's coming every hour just to work up the nerve to ask me on a date./

Gibbs knows how likely that is. If Larsen or Templeton ever asked to date Abby, it'd be for camouflage.

"Well, get answers when you–"

x

He's interrupted by the sound of running feet, looks left in time to see Karen Wetzel slam to a hard stop before his desk. Her hand flies to her chest as she drags in great draughts of air and checks her watch. "19:19!" she pants.

He's impressed but won't admit it; trust a green Probie to take his admittedly unrealistic deadline literally.

"What've you got?"

She's bent, hands braced on knees to remain on her feet. "Brand ... new ... asthma." She looks up and about the huge Operations Division. "How come... with all... this... space, Agent ... Kelman's team... is so far ... upstairs?"

"Special Agent Martine Joswig valued her team's privacy. Report."

Still panting, hands braced on her knees, Wetzel looks at him as though wondering 'who's Joswig?' and evidently concludes, correctly, that she won't get an answer. Breath and heart gradually slowing to a tolerable pace, she straightens and says

"Special Agent Larsen ... found the Hudson apartment… door hadn't ... been forced. He couldn't find... any evidence the apartment… had been ... broken into. Neither could any of them find much out... of the ordinary about the area from front door... to the bedroom."

"What did they say about what Mrs. Hudson said?"

"I didn't tell them... any of that." At his sharp glare she declares "You gave me _twenty minutes _to... make a round trip and report. You could've saved me time... by cluing me ... into _where _they were. I barely made... it back... _with forty-one seconds to spare_." She stops until she's caught her breath and, uncharacteristically, he gives her the time.

"But you did attach me to that team, I'll have plenty of time to brief them and turn in a full report to Special Agent Palmer, who the Director made one of the three _liaisons_ on the Gibbs / Kelman / Higgins super-team."

"I prefer Task Force," he corrects mildly, hiding a smile.

"So noted."

"Join your team."

"Yes, sir." Salutes aren't de rigueur in NCIS but she gives him one anyway, and damn if it isn't a precise blend of strict respect and carefully masked flippancy. Salutes are an art form and he sees her father's influence in her training.

She's lived through her closest brush with death here - that slap he's sure will travel the skuttlebutt circuit for weeks to come - and it's obviously given her courage. This woman, when rather than if she does ultimately become an NCIS Agent, won't be anyone's door mat.

When she's gone, taking the elevator this time, DiNozzo puts his hand on his phone. "Should I warn Kelman she's coming?"

"No."

"No?"

"I'm curious who'll survive. McGee, get a sketch artist to Hudson's hospital, I want a picture of this guy in the morning." He checks his watch and is immediately out of his chair, gathering his weapon and shield from his desk drawer.

x

"Where're we going, boss?" Tony asks. Sudden departures are hardly uncommon, but they usually get a warning, though it's usually 'grab your gear'.

"Not you. Something to do." He passes Ziva's desk. "See you in the morning. Let yourselves out."

DiNozzo checks his own watch, 1528, thirty-two minutes before nominal quitting time, but when is quitting time strictly observed by them? "Thanks, boss," he tells the man who's already descended in the elevator.

x

No one wants to waste the time speculating; Gibbs has long ago proven such efforts are useless. Instead they search one another in silent communion on the likelihood of leaving work on a _Friday _- even if they do have to come in tomorrow - with enough of the day left to them.

Michelle, gaze sliding past Ziva, sees Jimmy's head approaching from the elevator - he's just tall enough to clear the partitions from her seated angle - and she remembers her promise about a (very late) lunch.

She waves her hand to ward off his approach, snatches her purse from the lower right desk drawer. "See you. Don't wait up for me," she finishes as she warps past DiNozzo's desk.

"Deserting a sinking ship, Palmer?"

"_Going _for desert. It's lunchtime."

She's gone, leaving the three in her wake.

"Well," DiNozzo says to the few who are left, "are we sitting here waiting for Dispatch to hand us another murder?"

x

He has his backpack in his hand, Tim and Ziva have paused at the entrance so they may leave together when Tony's intercom begins ringing.

"AARRGGHH!" Dispatch can't be so cruel, Beta shift is just about to come on duty. He looks to the others, they wait for him to answer the signal. Tense enough to rip every muscle, he stabs the blinking button. "Very Special Agent DiNozzo."

/Hey, Tony,/ Abby's voice chimes from the speaker and he relaxes.

"Hey, Abs, what's up?"

/Can you come down here? I've a favor to do you./

She didn't say 'ask', she did say 'do', and since he'd first met the Goth Scientist years ago he's never minded one of her summonses. Sometimes they prove to be the highlight of very dreary days. "I'll be right there."

Turning off the unit, he says to his waiting partners "You go on, this could take some time."

To Ziva he sounds like he's anticipating the encounter just a bit too much. "Be careful, Tony, she is one of the few women in NCIS who is still speaking to you."

"Hey, it's me."

"That is what I am afraid of."

xx

When he arrives at the Forensics Lab Tony's surprised by the quiet. The last time Abby had had her bone-shaking music turned off it hadn't been a good sign. Come to think of it, whenever these rooms are silent it's not good. "Abby?"

She scares him when she pops out of a Space-Time Vortex, actually from the other side of her now fairly crowded free-standing workstation but a disconcerting image regardless. She's holding a small video camera before her eye.

"Tony, I've figured out how you can get your revised word about Siobhan's preg–"

"Don't say it. But lemme guess: smoke signals."

She lowers the camera in a huff. "_No_. Something so obvious I'm amazed I didn't think of it weeks ago. I have everybody's email address and I do mean everybody. With a few clicks your message will get to everyone in the Headquarters District. Goodbye rumor, hello peace of mind."

"Abby, I'll love you forever."

"Can it, I'm just doing it to get the old Tony DiNozzo back. The sack cloth and ashes Tony was driving me ca - razy."

He fixes his tie, adjusts his jacket. "Shoot. Figuratively."


	21. Wind Beneath My Wings

Chapter Twenty One  
Wind Beneath My Wings

Michelle Palmer sits across from Jimmy at the fifth floor Café table, so tense that she fears if she moves she'll shatter. She and Jimmy hadn't made lunch because of Gibbs' driving the team for answers, and after the debacle in the Ladies' Room she's been dreading this moment.

"I was hoping you wouldn't still be mad," he says, their trays untouched before them and the silence since boarding the elevator unendurable.

"I'm _not _mad," she says too hard and forcibly reins it in. She'd been furious at his anxieties but not at him.

"I looked for you earlier, couldn't find you so I took a walk."

"Why didn't you call? I'd've told you I was interviewing a witness - Mrs. Hudson."

"You mean Michelle Lee Hudson?"

"Jimmy, please don't." That coincidence had instigated all today's tension.

"No, I won't."

"Didn't you believe I'd never div–?"

"Honey, I'm sorry," he says quickly. "I shouldn't have done it."

"I shouldn't have done it." She reaches out, wants his hands about hers. She'd been light years beyond rude in the ladies' room, all the DiNozzo-inspired aggravation adding fuel to her fire. "This is tearing me apart." They've been dealing with these traumas, guilt, nightmares and worse for months, with no resolution in sight.

"I know, honey. I wish I knew what to say, what to do."

"Talk to me. That's all I ever wanted you to do."

x

"It's just so _hard_. When I think of things, all that's happened since I murdered... I feel like my life is shattering. I lash out at you because I'm so afraid."

"Of what?"

"Of losing you."

"You're _not _going to lose me."

"Last night I did." He sees her anger spark but raises his hand to cut her off. He doesn't want to talk about dreams of her dying in a crossfire of machine guns as Sonny Corleone did in 'the Godfather', he needs her to know that "Every day you go out, every morning you take that shield and Sig, I'm afraid."

"Of what?"

"You're so far _away _from me. You're in danger every day and _I'm _too far away. Agent McGee, agent Gibbs, agent DiNozzo, they're near you. When you almost suffocated in that house, when you were in that warehouse, when you were trapped in that sauna–"

"When _you _were _shot_! I thought _you _were going to die."

"I thought _you_ died."

"No."

"Honey, I'm so _afraid_. Every day I'm afraid."

x

She can barely believe these words, can barely stand the cold rush they bring her blood. "You never told me." They'd discussed so many other fears, he always held this back.

"I couldn't. I was too afraid. And then I dream I'm autopsying you…."

"Oh, honey." She tightens her grip.

"Ziva told me before we got married, when you were just back to the field, that we'd go through this, that I'd want you to quit, to go back to Legal–"

"Is that what you want?"

"_No_. No, she also told me you'd hate me if I made you give up your ambitions."

She can't help but grin, yet he keeps her hands just as tightly in his. "Well, not _hate _you, but I'd be pretty pissed."

"I know. You want to be an Agent, you have it in you to be a great agent. I'm the one who can't deal with it."

x

"Jimmy," she pulls her right hand free so she can grip his hand as tightly as he does hers, "I have as much chance of stepping in front of a cab as I do being gunned down by a terrorist – have you seen the cabbies in this city? – but when the Goddess' time for me comes–"

"I want to be there to _save _you!"

"I know you do. And I wish you could. But we _both _know that when it comes time for me to go to the Summerland I'm going, but that might not be for decades. You'll probably be sick of me long before then."

"Impossible."

"Honey, I want to make the time – the decades – we have together mean everything they can. I want to grow old with you, give you children who'll give us both grey hair – though you'll probably go white,"

"Probably."

"but I can't do that unless you open up to me. I'm your wife, you're my husband, and I want us to be husband and wife for a long time to come. Please let's do that. Let's make a pact."

"A blood pact?"

"Don't be an ass. Let's always be completely honest with each other. No more holding back, no more protecting each other because we don't think the other can take what's happening to us on these jobs. You're going to be an ME who'll outshine Ducky and I'm going to take over Gibbs' job but we're not going to do it together if we're not together, and we won't be together unless we're together."

He puzzles over that for a moment. "I _think_ that makes sense."

"Trust me, I'm a witch."

"I'm most afraid of that."

x

He did _not _just say that. "You're scared of that?"

"_YES_!"

"_Why_?" It's a year, sort of, since she'd opened up to him but he'd always seemed fine with her faith. She'd always known he _used _to be uncomfortable with her faith in Wicca, she'd often described herself as an Episcopalian Witch where he's Roman Catholic, but while they haven't reconciled their choice of faith or even which church they'll finally settle upon, she'd thought they'd left his discomforts with her practice of witchcraft in the past.

x

"All those things you can do, and I can't understand any of it. Ducky and Abby take it in stride but I _can't_."

Is this how it felt to Gibbs when Karen Wetzel slapped him? "You never–"

"Come _on_, honey; spells and incantations I can't believe in but they _work_? Cures I can't find in any medical book but they _work_? You saved my _life_. I should be dead but your power... _sustained _me and to this day I can't find any medical reason why I'm alive."

She pulls her hands back to pull the athame from her heart. "I thought you'd be grateful."

He snatches her hands tightly. "_I AM_! I'm alive because you love me."

"I do love you."

"And I love you."

"You knew I was a witch when you married me. I held nothing back - from anyone, not even Mother McGee. I knew you didn't... I thought you kept your distance from my faith and practice because you know it's private to me, not because you're–"

"Afraid." She nods sharply, convulsively. "It confuses me. I'm a doctor, I know there's nothing evil–"

She half-leaps from her chair. "_EVIL_!" She _never _imagined HE would use the E-word.

"NO!" He clutches her hands tightly, looks about at the growing dinnertime crowd and quietly coaxes her back down. "No, that's not what I meant. I've met some people from your Coven, I know your High Priestess. Heck, she helped save Sammy Sky. But I'm saying that sometimes I'm confused... And scared."

x

She grins, relieved that she _can _grin. "Well, you're certainly not scared of _me_, are you hon?"

"...Sometimes." She feels her other cheek slapped. "You have... a bit of a temper."

"Everyone has a temper!"

"Remember when those men were making nude fake Internet pictures of you and the others?"

"_Yes_."

"I really thought you were going to ... I don't know what to them."

"You stopped me." And far too dramatically too. It'd shaken her to her soul, forced her to reevaluate the comfortable assurance that she has herself under control.

"Remember my dream, the one that I beat you up?"

She'll never forget, didn't want to be reminded. "You came into the bathroom while I was showering, begged me not to blast you to dust or transport your heart to Outer Mongolia. _Ewww _again."

"I really believed you'd do it."

x

Her breath seizes, her heart is ripped in half and each half crushed; her breath returns in spasmodic gasps and tears flood her eyes. "OH... MY... _GODDESS_!"

"Honey?"

She clings to his hands as tightly as she can, can't stop the tears that wash her cheeks. "I _can't _... do that! It's imp- imp- imp- ossible! Honey, you've GOT TO _BELIEVE ME_!"

"I believe you."

"No you DON'T!" She yanks her hands back, covers her face and weeps. Jimmy looks around. No one is looking, even the agents who face them over their meals ignore them yet he feels that everyone's watching in that way agents use. "I would never!" she sobs. "I WOULD _NEVER_!"

"Darling, please... Stop crying. Please."

x

He gets up, gathers her to himself. She clings to him, shattered, inconsolable as he guides her between the tables and outside the cafeteria, she clinging to him and not even trying to stop sobbing. Outside the door he guides her to a corner, can go no further. He hugs her but she clings to him, face buried to his chest as the violence increases.

Men and women pass in each direction, those going into the Café hesitate, thinking to offer comfort but Jimmy's eye contact steers them away.

His shirt grows wetter, soaked with her violent tears and it's many long, brutal minutes more before the storm subsides; not, he senses, because of regained control but because she's exhausted herself. She rests slumped against him, held on her feet only by the strength of his hug until finally she's limp against him.

x

"Honey?"

"Whaaa-at?" she asks in weak but unalloyed misery.

"How do you feel?"

The absolute absurdity of the question rips a bark of near hysterical laughter from her.

"_Bleck_," she can finally say. Her arms fall limp to her sides, dead weights, and only his grip keeps her upright. "Did I just make a spectacle of myself in front of a hundred agents?"

"Alpha shift dinner, Beta shift breakfast, more like two hundred."

"I wanna go home."

"Okay."

Her arms go about him again. He's glad to feel her strength returning. "Jimmy, wait. About that pact?"

"Anything, just don't start crying again."

It's a near thing, she won't take any chances. "From now on, we don't go to sleep at night without talking."

He thinks this over, evidently reluctant. They will talk now – a lot, and about things he hadn't ever been able to raise, but "Do we have to just _talk_?"

She pulls back from him, rubs stinging tears from her eyes. "James, you are an _idiot_."

"But that's why you love me."

She rests her head back against his chest, feels the overlarge wet spot on her forehead. "That's why I love you."

xxx

Fort McNair, where the new Colonel in charge of the Criminal Investigation Division for the mid-East Coast will have her headquarters, is abuzz with its usual activity and yet the room chosen for the Ceremony is a Staff Meeting Room, barely 40 by 50, an intimate chamber where the US and Army flags flank a projection screen before forty chairs. By tradition this is not a parade-ground ceremony. Hundreds of troops do not stand at Attention, not even all the seats will be filled with family and close friends; yet the intensity of those who come to witness this occasion will more than make up for the small numbers.

There's a period of socialization, everyone wants to get a minute with the star of the evening. Gibbs is glad they'd spent last night together for there are more well-wishers than minutes before Thomas Ward, Commanding General, calls attention by escorting Lieutenant Colonel Hollis Mann to a position before the white screen, flanked by the colorful flags. He then directs everyone to stop where they are and calls upon an Army Chaplain for an Invocation.

x

"If you'll all take your seats, we'll get started," Ward says, his informal tones, setting that for the evening, serious but not solemn.

"First off, I'd like to thank Hollis for picking me to administer the Oath of Office today, and on her behalf I welcome you to Fort McNair on this most suspicious occasion.

"I've known Norma Jean -_ap_, I mean Hollis Jean," slight chuckles, for she resembles Marilyn Monroe no more in personality than in appearance, "since she was a pup of a Corporal, but I always knew that if anyone could make a mark in this man's army," other chuckles from certain of those in-the-know, "it would be Hollis. So this evening I'm proud to come before this special assemblage of family and good friends as we do this for a most special offi- no, I'll say it, for a most special lady.

"I believe we have ..." consults a small card, "Hollis' brother William and nephew William Junior."

"Will couldn't come," William Senior announces as he approaches his sister's side. "He has Engineering Finals today at the University of Hawaii." It's early afternoon there.

"I've asked Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs of NCIS to substitute," Hollis says.

"Special Agent Gibbs," Ward calls as he rises, steps forward, "think you can represent the young man?"

"I'll do my best, sir," he says as he takes his place on Hollis' left side and as the trio face the audience he gives her hand, low at their sides, a brief, discreet squeeze.

x

"Attention to Orders," Ward commands sharply and Mann comes to hard attention, eyes front as the General announces "The President of the United States has reposed special trust and confidence in the patriotism, valor, fidelity and abilities of Hollis Jean Mann. In view of these qualities and her demonstrated potential for increased responsibility, she is therefore this date promoted in the United States Army to the grade of Colonel."

At this declaration Jethro and William remove the gold leaves from her uniform shoulders and replace them with gleaming silver spread wing Eagles.

"Eagles," Ward explains as the men work, "have been popular symbols in our and other Military Services at least as far back as the Romans. Colonels started wearing spread Eagles as rank insignia in 1829 when they transferred the gold or gild eagles that decorated their hat cockades to their collars. After 1831, most of the Colonels wore silver eagles on the gold epaulets or gold bordered shoulder straps."

The men finish, each exchange brief kisses with the new Colonel - hers and Gibbs' discreet but a second longer - and resume their places facing front. Ward then presents "Ladies and gentlemen, the newest Colonel in the United States Army, Hollis Jean Mann, her brother and nephew-proxy. Photo Op."

When he's sure that everyone who wants pictures has ended the cosmic storm, and Gibbs and William Mann return to their seats, Ward steps closer, draws a card from his jacket pocket. "I'll use the card to make sure I get this right. Colonel, if you'll face me, raise your right hand and repeat the oath."

She repeats each phrase after the General. "I, Hollis Jean Mann, having been appointed a Colonel in the United States Army, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same, that I take this Obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office which I am about to enter, so help me God."

x

The base commander's Exec presents her with the framed Commission, another Photo Op, then Ward says

"The floor, madam, is yours."

"Thank you, General. Thank you to everyone for coming and sharing this day with me. I've never cared for speeches, for hearing them and especially making them, and I see no reason to break with tradition now. There's a big reception in the Officers' Club - _with food_ - so we can socialize there. So I'll ask you to stand and call upon Chaplain Thomason..."

xxx

The dinner party / welcome home from the war gala is going full blast. Navy Lieutenant John Galert's wife Peggy had little time to plan so large a gathering of friends, the news of the return of the Reagan is only a week old, but she'd managed invitations, catering and most especially a welcome that'll keep him warm over the next couple of months at sea.

John doesn't count the number of people who fill every room other than the kitchen - Peggy's no entry zone - he doesn't want to. Good friends all, he just wants to enjoy their company before he must return to the ship by 0700.

The door bell rings, someone close to the front opens it. John can't see, from his angle near the living room television, who's coming in now until a delivery boy wearing a Sparrow's Deli uniform steps in, a four foot long sandwich box in his arms.

"Mister Galert," he asks Jerry Sachter uncertainly.

"Here." John takes a step forward, hand in his pocket to get his wallet, when the young man turns to him and puts his hand through the right side of the box.

Thunder precedes lightning this time as the end of the box is obliterated and hundreds of fists pummel John from neck to groin. Shrill screams are cut by another thunder blast. Hundreds more fists slam him and then John can't feel anything more. He's not even aware of darkness or silence.

x

The kitchen door bursts inward as the young man runs past revelers too stunned or terrified to realize they can safely stop him. Peggy Galert sees her husband supine on the floor, blood sprayed throughout the room, his mulched organs in his blasted chest.

Even those deafened by the shotgun can hear her screech his name.

x

'They're probably flooding 911,' Lewis Craeford thinks from the far corner of the room as he reaches for the Galert's own phone, but it rings an instant before he picks it up.

/Lieutenant John Galert?/

"Uhhh" is all Craeford can answer.

/Lieutenant, Captain's Orders: All Leaves cancelled; report aboard immediately./


	22. Coffin Klatch

Chapter Twenty Two  
Coffin Klatch

Sammy Sky turns face down on Abby's black leather couch but her turn dislodges the blanket which had been tucked under her bare legs. The leather grabs, then releases her skin and the pull and loud noise are enough to slam her out of sleep.

She wishes again that the couch were a convertible or that Abby actually owned a bed and they could share, but she's a guest - though for a lot of weeks - and guests don't make waves. Or don't make something, she's not sure what, but Abby works with the Navy and so had she - for a glorious and terrifying three weeks - so waves it is.

Laying on her stomach, she opens her eyes and discovers the room's not as black as it should be - not for the Goth's lack of trying - but a crack of light peeks out past Abby's ajar 'coffin room' door. The room is beyond the living room yet of the same dimensions (kitchen to the right of this room, bathroom to the right of the next) so a light trace on the other side of the short hall takes the gloom off the living room.

Sammy gets up, her pink baby doll negligee - she'd said it's in case anyone comes in the middle of the night - fluttering against her thighs. Two right turns and she very quietly opens the door, ready to simply turn off the overhead light if Abby fell asleep with it on.

There's no need. When her eyes adjust Sammy sees Abby, dressed in her white funeral shroud that clashes with her hair, sitting up in her elevated coffin, her back to the door. "Abby?" she whispers. Abby looks back over her shoulder and Sammy can read her exhaustion. Last evening it was drawn on her friend's face, now it's chiseled in. "Sitting up sulking in a coffin is just so wrong."

"I'm not sulking." But the characteristic smile that would accompany that answer isn't anywhere in this city.

x

"You're not sleeping." Sammy steps in, trying to shield her brain from the image of the lovely, blonde, innocent - yet stupid - ingénue approaching the Vampiress' resting place while she's wide awake, should be asleep and is so totally not herself.

She stops beside the elevated coffin, glad the candles at head and foot aren't lit. She doubts she'd stay in here if they were. "You sick?" She puts her palm to Abby's forehead but the corpse shakes her head as much to get the hand off.

"I'm worried about Dawn, and I can't turn off about this case, I feel like the answer's right on the tip of my tongue."

"Say 'ahhhh'." She doesn't flinch under Abby's 'Gibbs Special' expression. "Come on, don't argue with your doctor."

"You're not a Doctor yet." The Medical School graduation is day after tomorrow, but it's really only a matter of a Diploma, a piece of paper. This woman apprenticed - briefly - under Ducky, so Abby knows she knows her stuff.

"Then I haven't lost a patient yet. Come on, stick out your tongue and say 'Ahh'." When Abby does give in, Sammy captures the member lightly between thumb- and finger-nail and examines it.

"Nope, nothing written there."

x

Abby pulls back, doesn't bother with more for the petite woman can be gone, sheer pink negligee flying in the breeze, before she can climb out of the elevated coffin. "Does anyone tell you you're a smart-ass?"

"A lot," she grins, irrepressible as always. "If it's a cute guy or girl, I sometimes show it."

"And then wha–? No, wait, I don't want to know. Two in the morning, last thing I need is one of your girl/girl or girl/boy - or girl/boy/girl stories flopping around in my head."

Sammy laughs but quickly smothers it, recaptures a serious expression and tone - rare things indeed for the imp. "Tell me about it."

x

Abby has to tell someone, and this isn't a story for her nuns, even if it could be divulged. Sammy's NCIS, or at least as much of an insider as an outsider could hope to be. Her three weeks working with Ducky garnered her access that she managed to hold over the months; she's visited on occasion, was once the subject of a murder investigation instead of the investigator, and sometimes she's even brought in, like that night when they'd both been mur–

No. Focus. On the present. That's grim enough.

"Tuesday the Aircraft Carrier Ronald Reagan, after saying a week ago that they're coming in, docked in Norfolk. Lieutenant Commander William Wetzel was Evaced to Monroe University Hospital with kidney stones, the ship is docked for two weeks of regular check-up and maintenance. The crew was given Leave in stages, the usual 1600 off, if they lived in the area they got two overnights and back aboard by 0700 on day three, otherwise it's back same day then out again later if they behave and there's time.

"Within hours, while Mrs. Mary Presit, after giving her husband Robert the welcome home he's looked forward to for eleven months," Sammy grins, enjoying the mental image stimulated by Abby's salacious tone, "is over at her parents' house to prepare them for Robert's visit, the mother suffers from Dementia-"

"Ouch."

"While she's gone Presit gets his throat slit from ear to proverbial ear."

"Blast."

"A few hours later, at Monroe where Wetzel's being treated, a black man, ID zilch - _yet _- slips into his room and injects so much Rocuronium into his saline bag that I found 400mg, enough to kill him five times more-"

"No _kidding_." The doctor in her shudders at the vast overkill.

"- still in the bag after he was dead."

"Somebody did _not _like him," Sammy says, chilled by the thought of laying still, limp and helpless, for 4 plus minutes while he suffocated, perhaps watching his murderer standing over him gloating. He'd have known in the first seconds that something was wrong, lain for four minutes completely unable to pull in a breath before he died.

"When I go," she decides immediately, "I want it fast - and I'll even take pain over _that_."

"Amen. But the Rock didn't come from Monroe. Not only is theirs accounted for - you know you can't have a couple hundred mils vanish unaccounted for and unnoticed - but the details were wrong."

x

"Can't the maker tell which batch it came from, who bought it?"

"Long shot, I've got it working. Problem is it's not an intentional variance from batch to batch, nor are we talking about something like taggets on explosives - when they _used to _use them - we're talking about that tiniest variance that crops up in normal operation. Quality Control variations, I just haven't had time to analyze the differences. It's been one murder after another, I get more information on the next and I'm swamped on Chris Drakis' murder. I can't keep up. I could exclude Monroe, but tracing an accidental variance that small means testing every batch they ever made - if it's even American 'Zemuron' and not foreign 'Esmeron'."

"Good _luck_."

"Oh, I haven't even touched on victim three, Wilfrid Hudson. First night together he and the Missus go to sleep, probably after a 'welcome home party'," they share that knowing smile, "when some guy gets in, beats him to a pulp with a tire iron–"

"First night?"

"Yep."

"Shit."

"Guy put her in the hospital with three broken ribs, a double compound fractured arm and a possible concussion."

"Who the hell doesn't like these guys?"

x

"Witness descriptions are all over the board as far as two are concerned. Wetzel's is on Hospital video, a clean shaven black man; Hudson's widow described the second as a white biker dude."

"Dude?" She really doubts that.

"And no one at all saw Robert Presit's murderer."

"And you've got to tell Special Agent Gibbs all about them."

"Not just Gibbs." She rubs her face hard, wonders if skin can get as tired as she feels. "Kelman's got the lead on the Hudson case, she and Gibbs split them in half before anyone knew about Presit being the first; they'd thought Wetzel was the first. And then Higgins' team's working on Chris Drakis' murder, and Rosa Arnell's team has that embezzlement case, I have to find a suspect's prints on a safe dozens of people have touched; meantime Lamb and his people are working on..." She raises her knees, supports her elbows on them and lets her head fall on her hands, gives an exhausted sigh. She hasn't even touched on her own worries about Dawn Caldwell.

"Boy, I'm really glad my doctorate's in Medicine and I'm going for an ME career while I play violin."

Abby looks up, turns to her grinning friend. "Why?"

"'cause it sucks to be you."

x

"Kid, your bedside manner–"

"Coffin-side, actually," she pats the white silk lined edge.

"You'll starve to death before you get a practice off the ground."

"We'll see. I have natural charm."

"That you do," Abby admits.

xxx

"Grab your gear," Gibbs says at the entrance to the bullpen, morning coffee in hand. He looks at his agents, they're barely into their own coffees - should have been faster - and should snap to it now. Prepared. Anticipate. "Dead Lieutenant killed last night in Laurel, Maryland."

"From the Reagan?" Ziva asks, decides immediately the question's pointless. A new incident would be given to another team.

"I thought Captain Clausen was pulling his people back to the ship," DiNozzo protests.

"Killer beat the Recall order by less than a minute."


	23. Eye on the Sparrow

Chapter Twenty Three  
Eye on the Sparrow

Two shotgun blasts into John Galert by a deli delivery man at his 'welcome home' party late last evening had blown a hole through him, wider ranging shot covered him with deep wounds. In the midst of a large gathering of friends and neighbors the bogus delivery man had carried in what all had presumed to be a four foot hero sandwich. A moment later two thunderous blasts had obliterated the end on the box and hundreds of shot pellets had torn through the left side of Galert's body, turned his organs to mulch within his open torso.

Overcome by shock and terror, no one had had the presence of mind to realize the assassin was then unarmed and could have been taken. He'd escaped through the horrified revelers even as Peggy Galert emerged from the kitchen to see her destroyed husband.

Such is as much as Gibbs, and therefore his team, know when his car stops in front of the yellow tape cordoned, two story blue house and the MCRT truck slips in behind it, followed immediately by the ME truck.

Howard County Police of Laurel, Maryland have already removed to secure holding all those who were present last night but, in accord with standard (and more courteous than Virginia had used) procedure, the untouched body of Navy Lieutenant Galert has been left in situ pending its disposition by NCIS' Medical Examiners.

Two uniformed officers had been posted in their car parked across the street and at the arrival of the small caravan on this overcast Saturday morning they come out to meet the seven. Gibbs identifies his people to Officers Winter and DeTait.

"Captain Carter would appreciate copies of everything you find," Winter says as he hands over the keys.

"Will do," Gibbs assures him, saying nothing of when that will be.

John Galert was supposed to have been safely aboard the Reagan, not cold and dead in his evacuated living room.

x

"What do you know?"

"Guy who opened the door for what he thought was an ordinary party refill order also says your man was walking toward him like he was going to pay and took both barrels straight on."

"Description of the shooter?"

"Thin, young, white, short blond hair, wearing a Sparrow's Deli uniform shirt, except we've already checked and Sparrow's doesn't have anyone like that."

Gibbs would be amazed if they did. Stolen, bought from the Salvation Army, duplicated; they can't get so lucky as to trace a shirt, walk into a deli and back out with the perp. "Where's the wife?"

"We have her with a female officer in the officer's home, those witnesses Lieutenant Malstrom interviewed already have gone to their homes."

Gibbs is about to walk up and down the man's back. The witnesses were sent to their homes? He restrains himself with much effort; it's the Lieutenant he wants wearing his shoeprints. "I'll want to see the wife as soon as we're done."

"I'll let Officer Esperas know to expect you. We'll Seal the house and escort you over."

xxx

Double shotgun blasts produce a lot of mess, and when the agents enter the home they find the unmoved body on the other side of the living room, straight across from the door, at the far end of a wash of blood that has painted everything forward and backward of where the man had stood.

His body, dressed in slacks and short sleeved button down shirt, is pulverized more to the left side, from neck to groin, by the expanding path of hundreds of shot taken full on. The center of the expanding pattern had still been concentrated enough to blast a fist sized hole through him.

The agents and doctors put on foot coverings, for only from the side may they approach the body. They work in silence, collectively too grim for banter or unnecessary observations of the obvious. Tim and Michelle step to the room's far corner and begin the process of photographing and logging the panoramic photos. When done there, they'll take the opposite corner, then a series of distant and approaching shots from an ever shrinking 'orbit', concluding with close-up shots of the body once the Examiners have finished their work.

At the same time Tony begins a preliminary sketch of the scene, aided by Ziva's use of an optical measurement unit to gauge the distances from the corners of the room and 'fixed' points such as sofa and television. Gibbs, most interested in the body, hovers close to the doctors, knowing the silence will not last long.

Ducky doesn't bother with the liver probe, for not only do they have the time of death from various witnesses yet to be re-interviewed but to-the-second records of the first of a flood of 911 calls. Beside these, the liver has been several hours exposed to air and is too perforated for a useful reading.

x

"Lieutenant Galert's wounds," Ducky, characteristically, breaks the silence first in confirmation, "are caused by two shotgun assaults. Even from here I can detect two distinct trajectories, the second in an upward direction."

"He was shot once, then again as he was going down," Gibbs concludes. He looks to where the spray of blood begins, fairly distant from the body but with no apparent exclusion zone that would mark the position of the shooter. Luminal may reveal smaller, further reaching traces that may be telling, but for the moment "He was standing there... and the shooter..." the area of destruction is fairly widespread through the torso, giving him a reasonable estimate of distance, "there."

x

For a moment all is quiet save for the workings of the camera and the susurrations of pencil and pen. The prolonged quiet makes Ducky turn his attention from the body to the standing Team Leader.

"We're doing nothing but shuttling from one murder to another," Gibbs says, his black mood filling the room. "No time to do a proper job on any of them."

"This is, admittedly, a peculiar situation," Ducky commiserates. "Usually you seek out a unifying element among the victims."

"Same ship, eleven month tour. Wetzel was vested, served aboard the Reagan for years, would've made Captain some day. We'll have to see about Galert but it was Hudson's first tour and Presit had been with the ship for over a year."

"They were all married," Jimmy interjects.  
"Usually when a husband gets it I suspect the wife," DiNozzo counters, "in fact I hate like heck to let it go but Mrs. Hudson was in bed with him and got four broken bones, Galert was in the next room in front of fifty witnesses, Presit was at her parents' home and they called and spoke to him while Wetzel was clean out of the District."

"There's a common link and we're missing it." Gibbs hates the feeling that he's staring at it and can't see it.

"Boss?"

"What is it, McGee?"

"Boss, I can't be sure, but..."

"Speak, McGee." His tone says more clearly than words 'don't drag it out'.

"I think the shooter is left handed and fired with his right."

x

This is enough to yank all attention to the man. "Explain," Gibbs commands, and his team can read in his face the effort he used to tone down his intensity.

"Well, look how the damage is mostly on the Lieutenant's left side though the shotgun discharge is straight on. The deputy told us he was walking toward the delivery man. If _I _weren't holding the shotgun in my dominant hand and arm, the back blast would turn it slightly to my right. I can be sure of firing straight only from my left."

Gibbs glances to Ducky, not to test the truth of the statement but to determine

"Yes, that would be consistent with what I'm seeing."

"Good catch, McGee."

"Why would the killer," DiNozzo voices the question on all their minds, "go to such effort to disguise handedness?"

"When we know why, we'll know who. Ziva."

"Yes, Gibbs?"

"Get that SAA on the phone."

x

Ziva had memorized the Special Agent Afloat's cell number and tries to pass the phone to Gibbs but he refuses it, so she hits the Speaker button.

/-gent Nevelle./

"Nevelle, Gibbs, you hear about Lieutenant John Galert?"

/That's all I've heard about all morning. Message came in last night, the Captain went apoplectic that the Recall Orders took so long. He's already spoken this morning to Galert's widow Peggy. She's even hotter that this has been going on since Tuesday night and last night her husband's murdered in front of 'the whole neighborhood' at his party. She's talking about suing the Navy for so much I suspect they'll just sign over the Reagan in lieu of cash. When some good lawyer brings in the other three families I can see my pension going to shit./

"That's just the start. Any theories why these four are targeted?"

/Not yet, but I can confirm that Galert will be the last - unless someone wants to launch a frontal assault on an Aircraft Carrier./

"I've known worse."

/Tell me about it./

x

He doesn't want to get into the hijack of the USS Millennium by a still unknown enemy - _damn _the DOD and Homeland Security, the CIA and all their cloak and dagger cronies - _or _the mechanizations of Jackson McGillicuddy, Antonio Crocetti and Herbert Morrison. Morrison, aka Vice Admiral Hing and Crocetti, better known as Krikor O'Hanion, itself an alias, are imprisoned following the Millennium debacle, but the third, apparently the leader 'McGillicuddy', is still out there and Gibbs doesn't withhold suspicion against anyone.

"What's your sense of these men?"

/I don't know them intimat – well. SAA's tend not to be popular people, but I hear you were one so you know. We're not encouraged to be buddies, no appearance of favoritism, which is why the turnover's so high./

A Special Agent Afloat is the only Sheriff in town, but that town is many levels yet in all only several hundred feet in length, so it's not like one can hop in a car and go to the next town for convivial fellowship - and with one SAA per ship there are no equals.

"Anything you have on those four."

x

The line is silent for some time. /Presit was in Communications, but he was a 'by the book' kind of guy. As a PO1 he didn't have a lot of leeway, but sometimes his fellows stretched the line a bit in letting personal messages slip out to families. He never did./

"Personal messages?" Gibbs doesn't let too much question enter his tone. This past tour was eleven months long.

/Yeah, I know. And when I find out I slap the sender and the sendee, but not altogether too hard. I remind them of the eleventh commandment./

"Thou shalt not get caught." She would have gotten records of the transmission, and if it was truly innocuous she might quote that unwritten rule. If anybody did break security, well that's why ships still have yardarms, or at least their modern equivalent. "But Presit never had to get caught?"

/Nothing like following the rules, but it doesn't make you popular among six thousand lonely men and women./

"What about the others?"

/Well, there you have me. Commander Wetzel, he didn't have to be popular with anyone but the Captain but he never went out of his way to be unpopular. Lieutenant Galert oversaw the Flight Crews, and he made no secret of the fact that this is his final tour, that when his term's up he's not re-upping. Next year he hangs up his uniform for good./

"How was he on the men?"

/Fair. He expected 101 percent and was rarely satisfied with 99, but he left the crews to their Chiefs. If anything, it was the Chiefs he rode./

"And Hudson?"

/Machinist's Mate and unlikely to get any higher. Kept to himself, didn't cause much ruckus. I understand he would've been a four year man./

"Galert and Hudson both coming out?"

/Not unusual, but they don't end together. Couple of months apart./

"What about Wetzel and Presit?"

/You'll have to check my records, you've got them and _I need them back _when we ship out next week; but Wetzel's career Navy, he wants his own ship. Presit - I don't know./

"Keep on that crew. They've got to have some enemies."

/Will do./

He brings her up to date on the theory of Galert's killer, maybe she can make something of it, but when he closes the phone his mind is still on enemies.

x

'Enemies, maybe,' Gibbs thinks, 'but who's doing this?' Wetzel's killer isn't from the crew, that much is certain. The description Hudson gave; 'big; leather vest, tattoos, messy hair and beard, chest like Shwartznegger, arms big as ham hocks' certainly doesn't match any of the crew, and though he has yet to get a better description than 'a thin delivery boy with short blond hair' he doubts that one will appear on the ship's roster either.

He reaches into his pocket. "McGee."

He and Palmer have reached the body with the camera, he's taking detail close-up photos, the woman at his side recording the specifics of every shot. "Err, yes boss?"

He tosses McGee his keys. "Get back to your computer. That ATM shot of Presit's killer, I want a portrait you could hang on the wall by the time we get back. In fact, hang it there over one of the deaders. Same with Wetzel's guy."

Tim hands the camera to Michelle. "Yes, sir."

For this time he won't correct him. "DiNozzo."

"On your 4:15, boss!"

There can never be too many head slaps.

"You and Ziva stay here. I'm going to that Deputy's place, interview the wife; Palmer, you're with me."

xxx

Sparrow's Deli is a stereotypical melding of cold cuts from a butcher counter and dried goods from boxes lining the walls, together with over-caloried confections that fill the middle of the room. The staff wears blue polo shirts embroidered with yellow sparrows and the deli's name in script, leading Gibbs to conclude that tastelessness isn't limited to the fare.

Of the three men and one woman, only one could be made to fit the description of the perp and not well, only by general build. All four ignore customers as soon as the agents, distinctive in their Federal Agent field jackets and embroidered black caps, enter the large room. Gibbs recalls that the Deputies have already interviewed the staff earlier, which saves time for he may go directly to a young Asian man who half-matches the shooter's build and open with the only pertinent question remaining. "You lose a shirt?"

Aon, for such is the name embroidered in yellow on the shirt he didn't lose, does lose five shades of color from his face. "Yes. That is, I did nothing. I see nothing."

"When did you lose it?"

"In the Laundromat, last week. Five shirts I have on Saturday, realize when I get home I have only four. I went back, owner say he see nothing."

"No one ever does."

xxx

When Gibbs and Michelle Palmer are admitted into the home of Officer Alyssa Esperas, any pleasantness is obliterated the instant he crosses her threshold.

"_YOU_!" Peggy Galert's explosion tractors their attention as she rockets to her feet from the couch to their left and launches herself across the room. "Are you two of the _morons _who let my husband get blasted apart at his own party?"

Gibbs has known hundreds of kinds of grieving loved ones, and though Galert's fury doesn't faze him emotionally he is on alert. Angry witnesses sometimes say stupid things, which is an Interrogator's dream, but they also sometimes do stupid things. In a voice deprived of all feeling, he introduces Palmer and himself.

"NCIS? You're supposed to _protect _Seamen, not let people walk into ambushes!"

Gibbs spares Palmer an instant's glance, satisfied that she shows no more emotion than he does. The best way to run an angry person down is to give her nothing to respond to.

"WELL? What are you doing to get the bastard that killed John?"

"Did you see him?"

"NO! I only _heard _him! But Captain Clausen told me John's the _fourth _one this fucking bastard's killed since Tuesday! What's taking you so long to _catch _him?"

"The descriptions are for four different people, we have two on film but no IDs so far." He won't admit that this is particularly galling; they've been running an FR program on Wetzel's killer since Wednesday afternoon.

Only one other time has it taken multiple days to ID someone, and that's a week he never wants to repeat. Having Dr. Maura Isles come from Boston to cover Ducky's two week vacation will be reminder enough of that search for Kate Todd's murderer.

"Well, what are you doing about it?"

"Interviewing you and your guests, get a description of the guy."

x

This halts her, at least momentarily and he takes advantage of it. "Did your husband say he had any problems on the Reagan?"

"My _husband _was a Lieutenant in charge of the flight crews. If there were a problem with his people he'd fix it. Otherwise, he'd have the CAG fix it."

"What was his behavior like yesterday?"

Peggy Galert's fury is wearing out, leaving her seeming uncertain which emotion should replace it. "I don't know," she admits, hand to head as she starts to pace. "Happy, normal, he only got a day and two nights, we wanted to make the most of it."

So far, this is one of very few consistencies. None of the men had reported any problems, either to their Command or to their loved ones. If there was nothing to report, then these four men were blindsided; but _why _were they targeted? That is the one aspect that refuses to come into focus. With the exception of Wetzel, none of them were in sensitive positions. Who gains by the deaths of a Lieutenant Commander on the night shift, a Communications Officer, a Flight Deck Officer and an Engineer...?

The answer hits Gibbs with the force of one of his own wake-up calls.

"Mrs. Galert, you'll hear from us soon." He pulls from his wallet one of his Business cards. "In the meantime, if you think of anything more, give me a call. Come on, Palmer."

xx

Gibbs is barely out the Laurel Officer's front door and striding to his car, a confused Michelle Palmer at his heels trying to keep up with his long-legged fast pace, when he has his cell phone in his hand. "Skipper? Special Agent Gibbs."

/What've you got?/

"The four men who were killed, who takes over for them?"

/Each has someone below them, I'd have to make some decisions. No one just moves up./

"I know. But I think we have to take a hard look at the guys who do move up. Your four could've been killed to make room for someone."

/You've got the files./

"And we'll be looking closely."

It's on that chilling note that Gibbs closes his car door and Palmer grabs the closest support, barely ready in time for the violent launch.


	24. Abby and Peck

Chapter Twenty Four  
Abby and Peck

No sooner is the theory fully hatched than Gibbs cuts its head off. He won't undo his call to Clausen, who has far more men than he does and may yet produce results on what seems an unlikely theory - in which case he'll take and run with them; he's known worse motives for murder.

Rule 33: There are all sorts of reasons to commit a crime. They don't have to make sense to us.

But in a scheme this complex; four disparate murders, a scapegoat perp could be identified but the depth of the plot makes the likelihood less.

There wouldn't be automatic advancement under any circumstances - not even in Wetzel's case - but the sheer extent of the crime has worked to throw the entire ship into chaos.

One death and a predictable advancement might happen, four deaths and that ship isn't going anywhere until the case is solved. Promotions would come from outside the chain of command aboard ship now anyway and who knows what the Roster of the Reagan will resemble once the dust settles?

Additionally, there's the Chris Drakis case. The USS Eisenhower's Special Agent Afloat's body still isn't released by Ducky for burial - not until it's fully assembled and the case closed - but is his death related to this case? The two Aircraft Carriers, the Eisenhower and the Reagan, are in the Navy Yard and Norfolk respectively but it's never been likely to him that the two cases are unrelated.

Gibbs doesn't believe stranding both ultra-powerful warships at home was the intent, it's a consequence of the ongoing investigation. And now security, normally tight in port, is now ultra-tight on and about both ships.

Director Shepherd will assign a new Special Agent Afloat the Eisenhower, but for now the SAA's office, and by extension the rest of the ship, is considered a Secondary Crime Scene until SSA Fred Higgins declares he can learn nothing more from it. Since SAA Drakis' records are safe at Headquarters, that won't be soon and the Navy is already exerting heavy pressure to get the Carrier - and its support ships - into open waters and on their way. The preferred date for that was early last week.

x

"When we get back," he says to Palmer, having decided not to go back into the house. He has all he wants from Galert at this point, "check with Higgins' team on their progress on Drakis."

She nods and clutches the door frame more firmly as he accelerates once again.

xxx

"Come on baby, give it to me," is what Gibbs hears Abby implore as the bullet proof, shatter proof glass door of her lab slides aside. "You can do it, you big masculine hunk. Give me what I _need_."

With any other person, in any other situation, he would walk away. With Abby, he more wants to test the proof of this door behind him by throwing through it whichever agent is violating half the NCIS' regulations and all of his.

"Come _on_, baby, give it to me! I know you can do me. If anyone can satisfy me, it's _you_, honey!"

She's not in her main lab, he traces the outrageous voice to her office - "Come on, babe, I know you can make me happy" - where he finds her alone at her desk, talking to her computer.

"Abs?"

She looks over her shoulder at him. "Hi, Gibbs. I'm just encouraging Harry, he works better if I urge him on a bit." She returns attention to her keyboard.

"You're encouraging him into a sequel to 'Demon Seed'."

She swivels in her chair, face alight. "_Gibbs_. An actual movie reference. A bit dated, but 'A' for effort."

"Don't tell DiNozzo."

"Oh, no, his filmatic experience is about to become legendary."

Whatever Abby means by what sounds to him like a dire prediction, he can use a little less legendary from his SFA. "What've you got on our killers' faces?"

x

She goes from elated to slumped. "Nada."

"Day four, Abby, and a Saturday. I don't like 'nada'."

"What we're experiencing here is electronile dysfunction syndrome. Tony forwarded me what McGee had on Robert Presit's killer–"

"Let's see it." Anything to help him forget that terrible reference.

"Coming up." She manipulates the controls. "Actually, it's pretty good for what McGee had to work with, but I've just input it, which is why I had Harry revving up."

"A little less revving, Julie."

She's pulled away again. "Wow, the 'Demon Seed' allusions just keep on coming. You're getting good at this." She turns back, then around again, more anxious than alight. "Or else your dreams are getting really disturbing, in which case keep them away from me. I already have my hands full talking to Michelle when she's kiblixing over Jimmy's nightmares."

"Kiblixing?"

"It's a perfectly good word."

"On which planet?"

"Beta Antares Four," she answers instantly, making him sorry he'd mentioned a planet, something he'd intended to be sufficiently sarcastic to drive her back to work. He'd be concerned how she happened to have this obscure reference on the tip of her tongue if her computer screen didn't flash the image of a man in profile on what's otherwise a night street.

x

He'd asked - demanded - an image that could be framed on the wall. What McGee's given them isn't far short.

They see a tall, muscular man with short black hair, short beard, sweatshirt and worn, faded and patched jeans. He's holding a black bag in his hand.

"McGee's still working on the opposite profile, the 'after' shot when he's leaving Presit's place."

"This is good enough for a BOLO. When you have both sides, run the Recognition program–"

"Already running," she reminds him.

"We'll run five BOLOs, the four individual ones - three are already out - two artist works and the hospital picture. We'll also post a collective fifth."

"Don't _talk _to me about that hospital shot."

"Why not?"

"_Because_, Gibbs, I've been running it for almost 96 hours and no hits at all. Whoever it is I don't think ever had a license, city job, got busted or served in any military."

"Lots of people don't fall into any of those."

"I know but come _on_, Play Fair. Peck's almost worn down to a nub looking for that guy."

"Peck? You named your Facial Recognition program 'Peck'?" Normally he wouldn't care, but this is outré even for Abby.

"After Templeton Peck from 'The A-Team'. You know, Face Man."

"I didn't know that."

"I could've called him Templeton but we already have one, it might have gotten confusing. People wouldn't know if I was talking about Ken or Peck here," she pats the machine.

x

Gibbs, considering the possibility of confusion extremely unlikely, starts to feel that familiar headache he gets on the left side of his head whenever he spends too long in the Abbyverse. He doesn't want to know what led to this interest in the 'A-Team', whatever they are. Unfortunately Abby's willing to share.

"Sammy has the first two seasons as boxed DVD sets and got me hooked. Catchy theme. You know, you'd make a very good Hannibal."

"Thanks." He'll assume that's a compliment.

"Then lately Tony would make a great 'Howling Mad' Murdock."

"Howling mad? Oh, yeah." Especially lately over the fallout of his own indiscretions.

"That'd make Ziva Barracus, but don't tell her I said so."

"I won't." Whatever a barracus is.

"So that'd make McGee Peck."

He knows he's going to be sorry for this, but Abby when revved up tends to draw people in, sort of like a whirlpool. "Why?"

"Because he's cute."

x

Gibbs won't forget that Abby had once had affection - read love - for McGee, but he'd hoped she'd gotten over it by the McGees' wedding. He, however, doesn't mention Michelle for fear she has an assigned place for the woman, he's had quite enough. He already has Tim's work on the picture, but "What've _you _got on Presit?"

It's sometimes disconcerting how she can switch from fun-loving tease to Scientist within the same breath. "He was killed with a straight edged knife and it wasn't one of the knives Virginia State Trooper Forensics collected from his place and shipped over when you pinned their ears back; they're all clean."

x

He's partially out of the door when a 'ping' snares his attention. There's nothing fundamentally different about this ping to distinguish it from any other ping coming from Sciuto's equipment, but something in this ping tells him he needs to pay attention to it.

He returns to Abby just as she opens an email; the ping was an announcement of the message's arrival in her mailbox, that message is from McGee and the paper clip emblem indicates it has an attachment.

"McGee has the 'after' picture ready."

"I see that. Let me see it."

One second after the image expands upon the wall-mounted plasma screen Gibbs has his cell phone in his hand.

"DiNozzo, Presit's killer had a black bag on the way to his place, he didn't have it when he passed the ATMs again. Comb the area."

/Boss, VST units all combed the area... and now we're gonna comb it./

xxx

"If you continue sending us bodies to autopsy and autopsy reports to glean," Ducky announces without looking back at the opening doors, "you shall only hasten my forthcoming vacation."

"Anything to keep Dr. Isles away," Gibbs tells him.

This ungracious declaration does make Mallard look back. "What's wrong with Dr. Isles?"

"I don't like her face."

"Ah." He sets down the spanner and removes his latex gloves, so Palmer takes his own off and reaches for the box of fresh ones on the shelf beside him. "By which you mean you do not like her face on _her_, that you prefer she wore a different one."

"Shakes me up, Duck."

"It does give insight into bone structure and facial features and their relation to genetics, since Dr. Isles and the late Agent Todd shared no familial history."

"Where'd you find her?" He wishes the man had left her there.

"I did not exactly 'find' her, as you put it. But I _do _belong to a professional organization." He leaves it, in tone, at 'I shouldn't have to remind you'. "The National Association of Medical Examiners," he turns to Palmer, "which reminds me, young man, your preliminary paperwork to them is now extremely late."

"I'll get it out this weekend. I promise."

"See that you do. I should dislike having to show up some evening to collect it while you and your lady are at the dinner table."

"I promise."

"Well, good." He turns back to Gibbs. "Where were we?"

x

If he didn't need the information he'd prefer to be back with Abby. But there's this to be gotten through before it comes up again when he can't control it. "Selecting Maura Isles?"

"Oh, yes. Well, anyway, I sent out a message through the Association detailing my need to have the job covered for two weeks and she was one of the very few that replied."

Okay, luck of the draw and he's been dealt a bum hand. "What do you have on our four victims?"

"Collectively?" Ducky looks slightly overwhelmed.

"What are we dealing with? A kid with a shotgun, a man with a relaxer, a biker with a tire iron and a guy who slits someone's throat with a knife."

"I agree, an impressively eclectic selection of weapons, methods and so forth. Certainly the group wielding them will be equally eclectic."

"Well, yeah, Duck, that's why I came to you."

"I shall attempt to feel flattered." He takes a moment, perhaps to gather his thoughts. "While we cannot know emotional content save indirectly, there is a wide range between using a syringe and beating someone to death with a tire iron, with three slices from a knife being closer to the syringe in range than the shotgun. In three cases the murders took place at home, but in Messers Hudson and Presit's cases there was, you said to me earlier today, indication that the locks were picked."

"Abby found microscopic scraping in the cylinders."

"A curious conundrum. While I gather your team contests with one another in speed and skill at legally sanctioned breaking and entering, the patience required to learn and apply said skills seems inconsistent with the common conception of a 'biker dude'."

Gibbs looks for a smile behind the heavy irony, finds it in the twitch of a single muscle. "But we don't know about the guy who killed Presit, and we can't say yet if any of the killers worked alone." In only Wetzel and Presit's cases are there photographs of the perps, but even those photos are giving Abby fits.


	25. Mea Maxima Culpa

Chapter Twenty Five  
Mea Maxima Culpa

When Gibbs reaches the Squad Room with expectations of progress, he discovers he's not the only one. Ruth and Anne Wetzel, along with Frank Norton, impatiently await him along with Ziva and Michelle, and they're not hesitant about voicing their expectations.

He suspects the older woman hasn't slept in the days past. Her face is drawn and pinched, her movements sharp and tense while her blood-shot eyes testify to unremitting distress. She starts to brush aside hair that'd dislodged in her quick turn to the bullpen entrance, but switches the movement to her unbandaged right hand.

"Agent Gibbs, it's been _four DAYS_! Aren't you ready to make an arrest _yet_?"

He tries to keep his patience – they're grieving family even if they are authorized, by their clipped Visitor passes, intruders. He doesn't want them focusing on their frustrations or angry impatience, he wants them focused on answering his questions. "Where's your other daughter?"

"She said she has an _assignment_," Anne bites, evidently frustrated over this as well.

Good, Karen Wetzel remembers her place is with Melanie Kelman's team, helping to do other than to drive him crazy.

"We're making progress," he says, noting that this time Frank Norton is with his fiancé and particularly that his team, though at their desks, pay strict attention but stay in the background. Fine, he has enough tact to deal with the trio.

He turns to Ruth Wetzel. "When did you leave for Pimmit Hills?"

"Straight from my damned job when my fucking boss wouldn't even let me meet the Reagan when it pulled into port. I didn't see my husband _at all _because of that useless waste of time that cocksucker dumped on me. It could've been handled with a conference call but _noooo_, I had to go all the way out there and fucking stay _overnight _and then find out on the way _back _that Bill was dead!"

x

Unfazed by Ruth's fury, he glances to Anne. "And you were at?"

"At our engagement dinner," Frank Norton answers for his to-be wife.

"So did you see your father?"

"_I found his body_," she declares, angry perhaps at having to remind him. She'd shown up at Monroe University Hospital early Wednesday morning, found her father dead when she'd convinced the nurse on duty just minutes after dawn to let her into the room so she could tell her father the good news about the previous evening's engagement.

"So did you see the Commander on Tuesday?"

"No, she didn't," Norton answers. Gibbs is beginning to appreciate, seeing the flare in Ruth Wetzel's eyes, at least one of her objections to the man. This is the second time he's interrupted to speak for her daughter.

"No," Anne cuts back in. "I was at work in West Hyattsville, then when I got back to Colonial Height we went to dinner, it was too late for visiting, that's why I saw him - found him - Wednesday morning."

"Can you think of any reason why your husband would be targeted?" he asks Ruth.

"You people _asked _me that already. _No_."

He glances to Anne, intending to convey by his expression 'what about you?'

Predictably, it's Norton who says "She can't either."

Angry witnesses sometimes say valuable things, and it won't take much sowing to reap discord in this gathering. "You always answer for her?"

"No I don't."

"You do so!" Ruth bites. "What the hell are you even doing here? This doesn't concern you!"

"I drove Anne here, you and Karen came along."

"Why you... Then you can just wait in the car until we're done."

"Don't talk to him like that!" Anne steps between them.

Enough anger and discord. "When did you last hear from the Commander?" Will inconsistencies pop up in the known story?

Ruth pulls herself back into the conversation. "A few days before they docked." He looks to Anne, while simultaneously - not easy to do but manageable after practice - glaring Norton into silence.

"The same thing, a message that they were coming in."

"You didn't speak to him?"

"No."

x

Curiouser by the moment. If he'd had the bronze leaf, the Marine equivalent of two wide and one thin gold bars, on his shoulders, he'd have burned out the transmitter on the way back to Shannon and Molly.

"What about Karen?"

"He talked with _her _every day on the way in," Anne seethes.

"Probably figured if she's going to be a Navy cop," Norton says, "he should stay on her good side."

"You _Fuck_!" Ruth cuts.

"Ziva, take Mr. Norton to Number One."

"With pleasure."

Gibbs wants to maintain anger but not out-of-control fury and the man's upsetting the balance, but he does take a second to wonder if the man will make it so far as Interrogation without Ziva breaking his arm.

x

When they're gone he can resume progress. "Why did the Commander communicate the details of his return directly with your other daughter but not tell either of you?"

"Because I'm getting married," Anne snaps.

"That's not certain," Ruth cuts.

"Oh, I'm engaged but not getting married? That's really smart, mother."

"You're still too much a child to know what marriage is!"

"What is it?" Gibbs cuts in. He suspects Anne was going to ask the same question, but he's interested in her answer - though she gives it to her daughter.

"It's when a couple will work together maturely, overcome problems together as a team, something neither of you are ready for."

"_Fuck _you! We're here to see about Dad!"

x

Gibbs considers it good that at least one of them has gotten around to remembering that. He now has a sense as to why William Wetzel wasn't in frequent communication with his family and looks forward to hearing about his relationship with his younger daughter. He suspects there are less fireworks involved there.

"We're still working on it," is all he intends to tell the women now.

He turns to go to his desk, uses the movement to make eye contact with Palmer. 'Go upstairs, talk to her,' he says silently. He wants the family plus one separated until he's satisfied he has all the answers he can expect to get.

Meantime, he'll stay here alone with the volatile pair. David and Palmer may return to find survivors.

Then again they may not.

x

Though the families had some lead time, about a week, as to when the Reagan would hit port, it seems that the killers, whoever they might be, had the same lead time yet used it far more efficiently, preparing at times quite elaborate deaths.

xxx

Nearly an hour after being given the evidence search assignment Tony and Tim begin the search at Robert Presit's apartment door.

They have a particular advantage over the Virginia State Troopers who had tried, as DiNozzo said, to hog the crime scene and, by extension, the entire case by preventing NCIS from examining vital clues.

They know exactly what they're looking for, a black bag somewhere on a straight line between the murder scene and the street-side ATMs.

xx

"This is going to be the easiest search of the month," DiNozzo predicts, which Tim considers particularly annoying since they've already checked the whole building again from rooftop to pick-the-lock basement. Tony had insisted upon that last because Abby had found scoring in the apartment lock that showed _it _had been picked.

Actually, she could tell that job had been done by an amateur; a more experienced break-and-enter man would've caused less scraping.

At any rate, the search is far from being the easiest in history for they're now a block away on the line and have found nothing.

"I'll bet VST has it and are keeping it under wraps," Tim says.

"Not after the dressing down Ziva told me the boss gave them. From what I could tell she was leaving out, he probably pulled up great stretches of skin and troweled salt into the raw places."

"That's very professional, Tony," but his sarcasm is directed at the many levels of assumption the man indulges in.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Of all things, he doesn't want to get into a wasteful fight. "Nothing, Tony. Can we just get on with this?"

"No, we're not going anywhere."

Tim is about to ask why, but the situation and the words sound so familiar. "You found it, didn't you?"

"Uh huh," DiNozzo replies with a smug, victorious grin.

He's not in the mood for guessing games. "Where?"

"Right there."

x

Tim follows the pointing finger to a black Lexus parked across the street, in particular to the vehicle's undercarriage. There, in the shadow, hangs a black bag dangling three inches above the asphalt.

"Driver gets in, heads to who knows where. In a few miles the occasional friction wears a hole in the bag, our murder weapon falls on some road somewhere in the bi-state area - if we're lucky - and then gets run over a couple dozen times."

Tim bends low, inspects the knot holding the bag to the axel. Looks like a rough, fast but effective job. "Not bad."

"Well?"

"Well, what?"

"Crawl under and get it."

"You get it."

"Don't be ridiculous; this suit cost five hundred."

"Should've thought about that before–" Then the familiarity of _this _conversation impresses itself upon him; they've been having the same one for years and he's tired of it. Further, since the arguments usually work out in the same way and he's in a blue jacket and slacks rather than a suit, he accedes to the inevitable and crouches down.

He won't crawl under, however. He uses the knife from his back pocket to slice the bag's handle, preserving all the parts so they can get a DNA trace among any other potential evidence the imaginative mind of Abby Sciuto can discover.

When he comes up and opens the bag, it definitely hasn't been a wasted effort. The black handled steak knife is covered on the edge side with caked blood.

xxx

Karen Wetzel was just getting used to working with Melanie Kelman, Kenneth Templeton and Patrick Larsen, finding in them a less stressful and eclectic group than the agents downstairs. Melanie, as she'd directed to be called after the second 'Special Agent Kelman', looks to be only three years her senior, seemingly too young to be thought to be managing a team of men definitely her elders, but Karen tries not to jump to conclusions. Not only can't she get most people's ages right, but she'd died in Georgia on her first solo mission because she took her partner at face value.

But just as she'd gotten settled after a harrowing ride with her mother and sister - Thank God Agent Gibbs assigned her to this team and she had a way out when they got here - now she's opposite the witch she'd met the other day, the one who'd freaked her so far out she's barely in the same country.

This, however, is not an episode of 'Bewitched'. Not only is there no laugh track but whoever wrote this dialogue was not in a good mood.

"Your mother and sister said you were the only one your father communicated with in any detail," she's just said.

"I guess so," Karen says, utterly failing to get comfortable. Is this witch like a Jedi? She touched Michelle Hudson, just touched her, and took away her pain. It was like Obi-Wan Kenobi with Luke when you first see him on Tatooine. Are there any other powers she has, any mind tricks to beware of?

"I guess so," she repeats in greater discomfort. She'd been in awe of the Asian woman ever since the trip back from the hospital. Couldn't Agent Gibbs have sent her own team leader, Special Agent McGee, to question her? That man she could imagine opening herself completely to–

No, wait - he's married. Darn it.

x

The witch raises her hand.

"_EEEP_!" she jumps back, almost topples out of her chair, causes Agents Kelman, Larsen and Templeton to look her way when the witch raised her hand in typical Jedi manner - and then halted an inch from brushing a long lock of black curl from beside her right eye.

All four stare at her, and all she wants to do is hide under a rock.

"Excuse me," Palmer says, a smile tugging at her lips as she brushes the hair away and lowers her hand, "did you just say 'Eeep'?"

"_Ya huh_."

"Why?"

"Because I'm scared you're going to cast some kind of spell on me, or use some Jedi mind power."

x

Michelle sighs so heavily it seems to shake the table. "_Oh, for the Goddess' sake_!"

"You're not?"

"I'm always a bit leery of her," Templeton puts in, "around the full moon."

"_You _have reason to be afraid," Michelle tells him. "You're a worse wolf than Special Agent DiNozzo, but it's my _husband _you have to be careful of." She turns to Karen. "Pat you can trust, but Ken's a total letch," she'll assist at any time in the men's camouflage, "but _you _... _don't _confuse faith with anything else. This isn't a dark fantasy movie, and I have little tolerance for people who can't understand that."

"I'll understand. I promise."

"Then don't be afraid of me. I'm just a normal woman who happens to believe in things you don't."

"You're not going to turn me into a zombie?"

She tries not to let what she feels show but strains for patience. Wetzel's promise hadn't lasted ten seconds. 'Minerva, she really believes I can, just like Jimmy.' That had devastated her, but encountering this again in someone else makes her decide to have a good long look at her friends.

"I'm _tempted_... but I can't. That's where the fantasy movie thing comes in. But if I don't have answers when Special Agent Gibbs calls for them, he'll make the Witchcraft Trials of 1692 seem like an inconvenience."

"Okay. Shoot."

x

Once again, she's tempted. "When did you last hear from your father?"

"The morning he docked, Tuesday. He was already in the Sick Bay, but the meds the Corpsman gave him were keeping him comfortable - or as comfortable as one can expect to be. He had no worries; he'd been through the operations before. He was just going to be a day late in coming home."

"He wasn't nervous, concerned about any danger?"

"If he was, he hid it from me. He was annoyed the stones had hit him again and changed his plans, but he never seemed to expect what happened. That's why I was so shocked when the Senior Administrator, Mr. Zito, came and told me. All the way up here I'm trying to figure what complication from a simple surgery he's had half a dozen times could kill him. Then I get here and he's _murdered_."

"Can you think of who would want your father dead?"

"Michelle, that's all I've thought about for the past four days."

"And?"

"Nothing. Not a blessed thing."

xxx

Michelle has made her report to Gibbs, as has Ziva about Frank Norton, and the three Agents are deep into research in the now-quiet Operations Division. When Tony and Tim return, things are no longer quiet.

"Abby says thanks for the evidence," Tony announces.

"I really doubt that." Gibbs knows the woman is swamped under the burden of investigating five murders, including Special Agent Afloat Chris Drakis' explosively dismembered corpse and home.

"No, you're right, actually she said–"

"That she looks forward to your visit and she'll have results on the knife as quickly as humanly possible," Tim says diplomatically.

Gibbs actually considers this an even less likely recounting of Abby's actual message, but he'll leave it at that. Something's happening in the background with the woman, he'll find out what's throwing her off soon enough, but for now he has murders - and more - to solve.

He's about to turn to another point in this very heavy laden investigation when the plasma screen mounted between DiNozzo and McGee's desks comes alive with the image of his Senior Field Agent. The man's wearing yesterday's clothes and he's in Abby's lab.

x

"Hello," the image says, capturing their attentions. The only one who won't look is the man himself. "For those of you I don't know personally, I'm Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo and this message is going out simultaneously to every NCIS Agent in the Headquarters Division in hopes of getting in front of a terrible rumor - which I started. It's an extraordinary method, I'll admit, but this is an extraordinary situation and I'm an extraordinary guy."

Gibbs watches his team, more attentive to them than the image on the screen. McGee's holding his breath, as though afraid of what'll come next. He knows every agent he knows and scores of people he doesn't know have seen or will see this damning film. Michelle looks like she's watching a train wreck she's powerless to stop. Ziva looks much the same, only her greater experience allows her to mask it behind a placid demeanor that fools no one.

x

"A few weeks ago I wasn't very extraordinary," DiNozzo continues his public confession and his real visage mirrors the catharsis visible on the screen. "I butted in, read information that wasn't intended for me - who among us hasn't done _that_? - but I wasn't on duty and the case I was getting on was my partner's - Tim McGee's."

The real DiNozzo looks to his partner, knowing where his yesterday image is going.

"For those of you who know what's coming I won't prolong the agony. For those who don't, you're the lucky few because you're getting the retraction without having to have the... Oh, the hell with it.

"The upshot is that I jumped to a conclusion. And worse, _un_like a trained NCIS Special Agent I didn't check my facts, and my assumption hurt a lot of good people, some good friends.

"Now, and for the record: Reverend Mother Siobhan O'Mallory McGee, NCIS' Headquarters Division Chaplain and wife of Special Agent Timothy McGee, is _not _and never _has _been pregnant."

Tim winced at that title. If there's any title that he knows his wife detests, one he's been made to promise never to use, it's that inaccurate one, reverend mother.

But there's so much more to wince at.

x

"That thought existed only because I put my nose where it didn't belong and jumped to an unwarranted assumption. That assumption, and the out-of-control rumor that grew out of it, _are not true_ but they have caused Mother McGee to resign as Chaplain – a decision I pray she finds it in her heart to change, because there are a lot of people here who need her.

"I'm not asking for forgiveness, I don't deserve it and as a ... not-so-good Catholic I have to do without it - but the rumor I caused has to die right this minute.

"To my partner Tim, I'm sorry. To Reverend Mother Chaplain McGee, I'm _really _sorry. Please don't resign on my account. There are too many people who need you."

The screen goes black.

x

A moment later Ziva is around her desk, then around Tony's as movement on the other side of the three west desks draws her eyes to Michelle's quick departure. Ziva doesn't stop but hugs Tony, bending to reach him as Tim's voice breaks the quiet.

"Tony?"

DiNozzo has to look beyond Ziva's crouching body, she's not letting go. "Yes?" His voice carries a strain of uncertain apprehension.

"I forgive you."

x

Gibbs is behind Ziva, his voice startles her into straightening. "Took a lot of guts to do that."

"Thanks, boss. That means a lot, coming from yo–"

"Not brains, but guts." This 'thanks, boss' is somewhat deflated, but instead of a slap, Gibbs reaches past the woman, pats the back of his head. Before moving away, he has one last thing to say. "Hope you can live with the consequences."

"Consequences? What consequences?"

He gets back the look he hates worst of all, the one that assures him 'you'll find out'.


	26. Another Nightmare

Chapter Twenty Six  
Another Nightmare

After the unsettling public confession displayed on their plasma screen, and which they know is in every electronic mailbox throughout NCIS headquarters, things too slowly return to normal for Gibbs and his team. When Michelle Palmer returns to her desk, red but dry-eyed, McGee takes a wire, plugs it into his cell phone, pushes a button for his home phone and, a few seconds later, his lovely wife's voice is in his ear.

/Hoigh, bindle, you're coming home?/

She sounds delighted to hear from him this Saturday early afternoon, since they'd expected to spend the day together but for the immensity of this case. His whispered words will wipe away that delight. "Get on the computer," he says as quietly as possible. "There'll be an email from Tony with an attachment. Play it and call me right back."

He cuts the circuit, realizes too late he'd forgotten to include any of his usual endearments, not even 'mo vourneen' - beloved. But there'll be another chance, he estimates in about four minutes, so he returns to his work.

Almost five minutes later the earpiece chimes and he pushes the button on the cell phone hidden on his lap.

Shav's voice this time is hushed. /My God, this isn't how I'd... this is out of control./

"What are we going to do?" Silence. "Shav?"

/I'm driving down there./ Silver Spring is nearly an hour away through Saturday city traffic. /I need to see him face-to-face, we can't do this over the phone. This ends _now_./

For the first time - ever - _she _hangs up without a final endearment.

xx

"Gibbs?" Ziva's call doesn't turn his head. "Gibbs?"

"Which one is it now?"

"Mrs. Hudson calling from–"

"Handle it." She can only stare, incredulous. Granted they have plenty of evidence about Machinist Mate Wilfrid Hudson and testimony from his hospitalized widow, but she's never known Gibbs to duck out on anything.

She knows his problem, it's hers and that of all the other agents on three entire teams - plus an extra hand. They have a vast amount, Tony would say a 'ton', of evidence and like with five different jigsaw puzzles of impressionist art, there's no single distinct image to build to and the pieces don't fit together anywhere.

x

"Palmer, you say Mrs. Hudson dropped the Divorce Petition?"

"More like let it expire after he went to sea. She says she hoped that, after eleven months, they could reach a reconciliation."

In the background Ziva's words are a series of aborted attempts, each one carrying more effort to be diplomatic than the previous attempt.

"DiNozzo, what about Insurance?"

"Each of our victims had the standard Navy insurance, they took four hundred thousand, which is pretty good for $26 a month. All listed their wives as beneficiaries though Lieutenant Commander Wetzel, being a family man, took care of his kids equally; the wife gets two, the daughters split the other two hundred thou evenly."

"No particular clauses?"

"Pretty much the standard, though Galert had another policy, 70 grand. But the Navy isn't going to pay out unless and until we close the case."

"No. That's why–"

"Special Agent Gibbs?" The woman's voice comes from above their heads, all the Agents turn their gazes upward to see Cynthia Sumner at the rail before MTAC. She takes a full step back, mindful of her skirt, though she doesn't actually look at DiNozzo or McGee. "Director Shepherd needs everyone in MTAC immediately."

x

When Gibbs and his team descend the ramp to the dimly lit well before the multiple computer screens it's clear 'everyone' is defined as his team followed by Fred Higgins' team of Susan Bourne, Max Crawford and Sol Mitchner together with Melanie Kelman's team, Patrick Larsen and Kenneth Templeton plus one.

"What's _she _doing here?" Shepherd demands, pointing to the 'plus one' behind Larsen.

Kelman, who's just touched down in the well, is surprised by the woman's intensity. "With respect, Director, Miss Wetzel is assisting us in researching Machinist Mate Wilfrid Hudson's murder."

"I'm _aware _of that, Special Agent Kelman. That does not clear her for MTAC."

"My apologies." The words come hard. Melanie, attention on the summons, hadn't thought particularly about Wetzel's presence until it was too late. Wetzel's a quasi-probationary trainee and Shepherd's right, but it grates to be publically called on it before her own team and that newcomer.

"Escort her out."

"'She' and 'her' each have ears, Madam Director." Karen Wetzel's voice rings through the chamber.

x

Three seconds of silence follow the fade of that declaration and Shepherd turns slowly to the woman still midway on the ramp. Templeton and Larsen have joined their boss, a show of solidarity, but Wetzel stands alone.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I can hear every word you say, and though you speak of me in the third person you want me to leave, so you have to admit that I'm standing right here."

Shepherd takes a step forward. "Young lady, do you know who I am?"

"The woman who's humiliating my assigned Supervisor, and Special Agent Gibbs will tell you how I take to that."

x

Shepherd, utterly incredulous now, steps closer past the men and women so she's at the base of the shadowed ramp, Wetzel halfway up. Wetzel does know exactly who she is, they'd met the other day, so she's either suicidal or–

"Special Agent Gibbs already scared all the hell out of me," the girl says, "so you're too late. I'm fresh out."

Shepherd closes to within inches of her, and is tall enough that even on the ramp she tops the newcomer and stares deeply into her shadowed eyes, but she finds no fear. She decides after several seconds that "You are either exceptionally brave or incredibly stupid. Which is it?"

"I'm not altogether sure, ma'am; but it'll cost you an Appointment as a Special Agent for us to find out."

More searching, more minute inspection. Then: "I look forward to that discovery. Don't come back with the wrong answer."

"If I do, Director, I'll never know it, because you'll be putting me into Arlington."

"Have a seat."

"Thank you, ma'am."

x

Shepherd returns to her spot. She'd heard about that slap, a story like that doesn't stay quiet for a half hour, so she's looked forward to testing the young woman that fought Leroy Jethro Gibbs to a standstill, and wound up very nearly with the same score. She wishes she could extend the test, for she's discovered courage - hopefully not foolhardy - coupled with fierce loyalty she wants some day at her own back.

Unfortunately, there's no time for more tests. Minutes count and their enemy already has too many against them. She directs all but Supervisory Special Agent Fred Higgins to seats; he stands with her and addresses the assembled agents.

x

"There's been a major development in the murder of Special Agent Afloat Christopher Drakis. We now believe his murder was a distraction."

While the men and women process this outrageous declaration, Higgins directs the technicians operating the Communications control panels at the left wall to open a channel already in holding.

A tan uniformed Navy Captain appears in medium close-up, silver eagles glinting on his shoulders. Karen Wetzel is the only one who doesn't recognize Benjamin Mingassi, commander of the Aircraft Carrier Eisenhower. A brief courtesy introduction, standard for such large gatherings, is all Higgins requires before commencing.

"Captain, would you tell us what you told my team and I earlier today?"

"Since the death of your agent, we've been conducting our own investigation based on probable reasons why someone might want him dead. Accent on the probable. We never imagined it might be used to cover the insane.

"Twenty five pounds of uranium is unaccounted for."

x

The declaration shoots through the security conscious group and Higgins gives them a few moments to appreciate its significance before continuing. "Can you tell us how this happened?"

"Four of our Engineering crew are under arrest. They didn't disappear with the uranium, making the theft less noticeable until a thorough inspection of the vessel for Operational Readiness uncovered the loss. Since then, we identified the guilty parties and have them for you. There may be others, but these four have taken refuge behind a wall of fascist rhetoric about Revolution and the New Order."

"How did they get the materials off the ship?"

"At great personal risk and they're each paying for it. They couldn't use any of the anti-radiation safeties or protocols or we'd have noticed, so they took the uranium out with the ship's garbage."

x

The foolhardiness of this scheme is staggering. Refined Uranium is a silver/white metal processed to fine powder. Improperly contained, it could be inhaled with tragic results. Those men might well have received massive, perhaps fatal doses of radiation. Without treatment, they're almost certain to die in the most horrific, prolonged torment.

The agents can see where threats the Navy can inflict will be meaningless against this almost unthinkable breed of suicide bomber.

"We're arranging transport to Bethesda, where they'll be treated for radiation poisoning. You can interrogate them there."

x

When, at Shepherd's signal, the technicians terminate the contact, she turns to the assembled agents. "I've already sent word of this to the Reagan's Captain Clausen, since it's too likely both ships were hit, in which case the deaths both teams are working on are probably another distraction."

"They're not," Gibbs saw movement to his right and countered a second before Wetzel could protest. Her father's murder a 'distraction'? "The murders are too specific, too well thought out and timed."

"I agree," Shepherd says, "but we have to be sure."

No one needs to expound on the dangers of twenty five pounds of finely ground and processed radioactive nuclear fuel.

"Kelman, your team will turn over what progress you've made on the Reagan murders to Gibbs and assist Higgins' team. Find that stuff before someone builds dirty bombs from it."

x

Dirty bomb, a phrase that strikes dread into every population's defender. Detonate a sufficient quantity of concentrated fissionable material and you get a massive explosion, radiation showers and untellable damage and loss of life - but the effects, while dramatic, are brief save for the long term radiation poisoning.

Such devastation as that brings not only a short and agonizing life to the initially exposed but to generations yet unborn. Large areas, perhaps even cities, will be uninhabitable for thousands of years; food and water contaminated to unimagined extents; birth defects, mutation, devastation that spreads like cancer throughout the fetus in the womb...

A dirty bomb jumps right to the level of eternal nightmare. Explode a standard bomb a mile up and radioactive uranium, no piece larger than a speck of dust, rains down upon vast areas and their people. Depending upon where - and the strength and duration of the exposure - thousands, hundreds of thousands, could suffer the massively deteriorating effects of radiation poisoning - and the fates of their children and future generations are unimaginably horrific.

There is, to many of their minds, no worse a way to die - or to be born.

x

"What about the radiation net?" Sol Mitchner asks.

"The grid is always active," Shepherd says, "and since the discovery of this theft it has been widened to include as much of the Washington suburbs as possible. No contacts."

"So the uranium is either very well shielded or not in Washington."

"We're working along both those premises. If the uranium is hidden, we'll know the moment it returns or is unsealed."

Left unsaid is that by then it might be too late.

xxx

"Ziva, McGee, you're with me," Gibbs announces fifteen minutes after the meeting in MTAC has broken. He had first ordered his team to investigate, though he doesn't believe it, the possibility that the four murders aboard the Reagan could also be a 'distraction'. The consensus is that, if it is a distraction, it's for something grander than nuclear bombs. It smells of the grandiose schemes of McGillicuddy, Crocetti and Morrison when they hijacked the USS Millennium.

McGillicuddy and Crocetti have been captured but Morrison is still out there, yet fifteen minutes into the expanded search he's called two of his team off. "Where are we going, boss?" McGee asks.

"To visit Valerie Clausen," he says as though stating the very obvious while scooping weapon and shield from his drawer with one hand and snatching his cap and field jacket with the other.

McGee flashes Ziva a 'well, why didn't I know that?' look.

"We've been looking for connections between the four sailors and the only one there seems to be is that they're all married. Valerie Clausen is their Den Mother. Address?"

DiNozzo announces it, it's in the Mount Rainier section of Washington.

xxx

Perry Street is zoned to private homes suitable to a Captain's salary. Though Wetzel and Galert also had homes they aren't half as expansive as their CO's. A moderate walk from the street along paving stones through a manicured lawn and Mrs. Valerie Clausen answers Gibbs' knock.

Clausen is of an age with her husband, but the blonde woman's demeanor is far less stressed. "I have some tea on, or do you prefer coffee? Sorry, instant is all I have." Her tone clues them that the mixture is probably at the back of a shelf, used for the gatherings the woman hosts.

Both Gibbs and McGee decline, though Ziva accepts the prepared tea. They prefer to accomplish their goals of finding information, or at least reasonable clues, and even instant would provide too long a distraction.

"We understand you're den mother for the Reagan wives," Gibbs says when they're settled in overstuffed chairs that border the living room carpet.

"I've rarely heard it described like that," she says, her tone indicating that she doesn't care for the allusion. "That's hardly uncommon."

"No, Ma'am, it isn't," he says far more respectfully. Though the 'post' as head of the wives' group is somewhat symbolic, it's common for Commanders' wives to step up and be the glue that holds families together over periods of long, often tormentingly dangerous separation.

"You know about what's happening aboard the Reagan."

"How could I not? Not only has my husband been stuck aboard for four days rather than one, but since the Recall order my phone's been ringing off the hook. I only silenced it for this, but there'll be half a dozen calls to return when you're gone. Some men didn't even get off the ship yet."

As much as Gibbs would sympathize, this opens another question. If the rotation of Leaves isn't complete, how did the killers have any idea when to strike with the precision they used? He'll order checks on the victims' phones; maybe someone tracked their targets this way.

x

"We understand you coordinated the wives and girlfriends in the area."

"Of the thousands in the Reagan crew, a hundred ninety three live in the Maryland / Virginia / DC area. Not all are married, but we assist all families as needed. It's actually become a full-time job."

"Do you meet here?"

"Within reason," she says, glancing about the spacious room and, by extension, the house. "Not everyone can come, and only on holidays do we get really significant numbers. Then I organize some outside activity. I'm not a Counselor, I'm not a Therapist, I just make time and place available."

"How often do you meet?"

"On the first and fifteenth of each month, so every time's a different day and no one's inconvenienced."

"Do you keep records of what goes on at these meetings?"

"Certainly not. Oh, I keep a record of those who attend; if I see someone's not participating I'll reach out to her or one of my cell leaders will. We don't want anyone to fall between the cracks, as it is."

"Cell leaders?"

Valerie smiles as though to say 'think I could do this alone?' "Nearly two hundred is way too many for me, and sometimes once a fortnight isn't enough, especially when word hits that there's any trouble, dangerous action and so forth. This situation'll set records." She puts down her tea cup, sits back with a sigh that speaks of more than physical fatigue.

x

"We encourage everyone to pair off into small groups, they set them up as they like, move between one or another as they wish. A lot of wives have grown pretty close to one another and we encourage that. We're not a formal group, the main body schedule of the first and fifteenth of the month is as formal as we get."

"But you keep records of who is in what cell?"

"Only, as I said, so someone doesn't fall between the cracks."

"What about the four wives of the murdered men? Presit, Wetzel, Galert and Hudson?"

"They're all active, in fact they were all here last week on the fifteenth."

"Then they know each other?" McGee cuts in.

"Yes," Valerie says, taken aback by his intensity.

"Boss, when we spoke to Mrs. Hudson at the hospital and introduced Karen Wetzel, she said she doesn't know a Wetzel."

"No, that's impossible," Clausen says. "They sit together at every session, Michelle and Ruth. In fact, I'm pretty certain they're in the same cell."

Gibbs keeps his tone level. "Can you get us a Roster of this cell?"

"Of course."

xxx

"Very Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo," he greets the caller and is surprised by the voice on the other end.

/Anthony, it's Siobhan McGee./

Tony sits up straighter, feels the blood drain from his face. He's never known McGee's wife to call him directly - he's only called her once - they've only ever communicated face-to-face but in light of his 'mea culpa video' he's unsure how this is going to go. "Yes," he says, a non-committal response.

/Could you come up to my office?/

Worse by the moment. The last time he was summoned to the Chaplain's office on four, it did not go well. He, however, isn't going to show fea– apprehension. "Sure, be right up."

He's glad only the Probette is here, he doesn't owe her an explanation of where he's going.

xx

He knocks on the anonymous door, distinguishable from the others only by the white on brown sign beside it. Two seconds, it opens and Tony's heart sinks. She's wearing her uniform; black calf-length skirt, light blue back button shirt, inch-and-a-half high white collar encircling her throat, her flame red hair flared to frame her face.

This feels so much like being summoned to the Principal's office, only a dozen times worse. "I'm in trouble, aren't I?"

"No, Anthony. Come in, please."

When he's in and she seals the door behind him, leaning for a moment against it, she looks to him to be preparing to say something he probably won't want to hear. She turns to him, visibly gathers herself.

"I'm sorry."

x

Tony doesn't think he could be more surprised. For the first time he doesn't have an easy movie reference to cover this situation. "I thought that's my line."

"Not when I've backed you into such a corner as would make you decide to create that film," she says, her brogue heavy with her embarrassment. "I had hoped to make you think, not to humiliate you."

"I have thought. A lot. Good old Tony DiNozzo has been nowhere in any of this. I never meant to hurt you."

"Nor I you."

"Don't resign. Too many agents need you."

"I won't."

He can read in her expression the same thing that's in him; they've both taken this as far as either of them can stand. "I'm sorry."

"I forgive you."

x

It takes him several moments before he can say it, and even then it comes very hard. "But I need something more."

"I know." She steps past him and, to his sparked apprehension, locks the door. Then she returns to her desk at the far end of the rectangular room, removes from upon it an embroidered band of purple cloth, five inches in width and, when she holds its middle and lets it unfold, seven feet long. She kisses the cross embroidered at the middle and drapes it over her shoulders, lifts her red hair from under it as he goes to sit upon the couch.

xxx

The Wives Group participation records are on a laptop computer. Valerie Clausen brings it out to the dining room table and sets it up. Normally Gibbs would direct McGee to take over this part but he wants to watch how the thing plays out. An all too familiar feeling is building in his gut.

The first file that opens is a spreadsheet, names down the first column, dates across the top and multicolored cells extend from left to right. Many are sporadic, some stretches of moderate length broken by white space, a sparse few are solid bars since they represent not only the main fortnightly gatherings but all the sub-groups as well. Clausen's is one dense bar, there are two more before the alphabetical list falls out the bottom of the screen.

"What do the colors mean?"

"They indicate sub-group gatherings by group, the blue ones are the regular meetings here while the black borders around any cell mean she attended but didn't open up or participate. Some don't always express themselves, they may prefer silent commiseration, but too many blacks I consider a warning sign that outreach is needed."

"Can you isolate particular ones?"

"Of course." He gives her the short list and when the other rows vanish from the screen what's left is chilling.

The four bars start out with slight variety but, from eight months back, they're perfect matches of blues and oranges.

"Do any others match these?"

Valerie restores the full sheet and, after a few moments manipulation there are three other names that, commencing seven months ago, are synchronized; Regina Elbourne, Dierdra Mimran and Marie McCourt.

"Who runs this Orange group?"

"Dierdra."

How many others in her group?"

A last manipulation of rows provides a total of eleven names including Mimran's, but the participation of the remaining four is sporadic and seems quite independent of any other of the four names.

"We'll need Mrs. Mimran's address and phone." He's gratified to see McGee already has his little mini-computer thing out and is busily checking names. He reads on Valerie Clausen's face that she realizes some of the depth of his concern.


	27. Hometime Revelations

Chapter Twenty Seven  
Hometime Revelations

Michelle Palmer answers her phone by the second ring. Months of Special Agent Gibbs' insistence has made the motion almost a reflex, and this time she's gratified to be automatically diligent, for it's her boss on the other end.

/Palmer, I want a warrant for all the Financial Records on our four widows for the past year, and add Regina Elbourne, Dierdra Mimran and Marie McCourt./ He makes certain she has the correct spelling of the new names.

"Yes, sir," she says, glancing past Tim's desk to the still absent DiNozzo's. Normally the Senior Field Agent would just go ahead and access the information; things must be taking an interesting turn for Special Agent Gibbs to order a warrant before the fact rather than as his usual afterthought.

/When DiNozzo gets back to his desk, have him work on it. I want answers the minute I walk in./

"Yes, sir," she says, but the line has already clicked off while she's still on the '-es'. She glances to DiNozzo's desk. 'How does he _do _that?'

xxx

Saturday mid-morning isn't the best time for unannounced visitors; that's why Leroy Jethro Gibbs likes it so much. If he is to work into the weekend for the second time in three weeks rather than the normal four week coverage rotation, he'll share the privilege of inconvenience with others.

That he brings with him a man who seemingly no computer obstacle can withstand and a woman to take out the physical and human barriers is icing on his cake.

Certainly Mrs. Dierdre Mimran's feeling at being so gifted isn't concealed. The short brunette with two children running through her home and a toddler perched on her left hip isn't offensive to her three uninvited guests, but that's only as far as their official rank will get them.

"What do you want?" she demands, punctuates it with a yell of '_Quiet_!' as the two boys chase one another into the kitchen and around the central table before they storm the living room. "Sitter's late _again _so I'm trapped unable to do a week's shopping otherwise you _would not_ have gotten me in. IF I HAVE TO COME IN THERE–!" punctuates an impressive crash from the other room.

Gibbs, who well knows the ineffectiveness of the Yell Method of supervision, glances at Ziva who nods and enters the other room. She'll have order established, non-violently but firmly, within seconds.

"Where's she going?" Mimran demands.

"Calm things down so we can talk." True to his word and confidence, a veil of silence covers the other room before he finishes the answer.

He can see the woman's overwhelmed and, by the look in her eyes, has been so for some time. He'd prefer not to add to her hardship - too much - but he wants to know how she is coping, and more.

"Have you heard what's happening with the crew of the Reagan?"

"Nothing else but, that's why they're out of con–" She abandons 'trol', wondering at the silence. When she peers in through the open arch, she sees both boys seated upon the couch, listening attentively to Ziva who stands before them. "I'll be a..." She breaks off, turns back to Gibbs and he can see she doesn't want to admit to wonder or to the ineffectiveness of her own control, but from the intensity of her expression Gibbs would gladly play poker with her on any occasion, but for unvalued points. He'd never take money from the defenseless.

x

"Tell me about your husband."

"Brian–" she bites back the catch of loss; after eleven months, less than one day together is a bitter pill, "is a CPO with the Quartermaster. I only had a few hours before he was called back. It's not _fair_." The child starts fussing in her arm, she forces back the torrent of emotions.

"We understand you're one of the coordinators of the Wives' Group."

She shakes her head. "Group pretty much runs itself. There are a lot of lonely, lost ... _upset _wives, especially now."

"Sorry about that, we're trying to keep their husbands safe. Yours too."

This seems to break through Dierdra's frustration. "Of course I want to help."

"Of the members of your sub-group, six are synchronized in their attendance, and as of Tuesday night four of them are widows." Into her (genuine?) surprise he names them, watches intently for any off-key reaction.

None. Is she very good or is she the unmentioned seventh? "Usually when a man or woman is killed the first one we look at is the spouse. This time the wives weren't present when three men were killed and the one that was present is in the hospital."

Distress but nothing more. "I don't know any of this. The last time we got together was last week. We're not scheduled again - no need - until after the ship leaves.

"Did anyone seem..." he wishes Mimran were a trained Agent, or at least a therapist, "out of the ordinary?"

"Define 'ordinary'."

x

If he had any of the widows before him he might be able to answer that question, but how to explain subjective observation and obtain information without revealing any? "Particularly stressed, more so than usual."

"Agent Biggs, that describes everyone. Seems any time some news happens, some inland battle, some explosion _someone _rings my phone, as though I have more Navy information than anyone else."

"Anyone ever talk about personal problems, anything in their lives that may be unusual?"

The child again distracts her, she sets him on the floor at her feet, rises to confront him. "Special Agent Glib, what do you _want_? Talk is all we do. Sometimes I have to shut half of it out just to keep from going insane. The Navy provides Counseling, when someone's available; we just do our best to keep ourselves sane. I'm not a Psychiatrist; I'm a Graphic Artist and a scared wife with a big house, three kids and a late sitter. Now until you can get my husband back here please get out so I can tend to my kids."

xxx

When Gibbs leads McGee and David back into the bullpen the first thing he wants to know is "Did you get the money records?"

"Still assembling them, boss," DiNozzo assures him and doesn't miss the impatient glare the boss turns back to him. "I found nothing unusual, however. All six you wanted reviewed are almost depressingly normal; everyone living within their means or trying to, no large influxes of cash such as might be traced to Arms Dealers, kickbacks from Navy Suppliers or anything else of the hinky variety. Actually, Hudson's going to be glad she never divorced hubby Wilfrid, her Insurance isn't covering much of her stay at the hospital."

"Navy widow gets assaulted and penny pinchers assault her again," Gibbs gripes, willing to throw off a measure of outrage to ease the weight of frustration. "Brian Mimran is in Supply, what about Elbourne and McCourt?" It's starting to get hard to keep track of the mounting number of victims.

"PO3 Edward Elbourne is part of the Gunnery Crew, Midshipman Del McCourt is a Mechanic."

"With the exception of Lieutenant Commander Wetzel and _possibly _Lieutenant Galert," Ziva sums up, "no one is in a critical or even significant area of responsibility."

"The Alphabet Murders, Tony Randall, Anita Ekberg, directed by Frank Tashlin, 1965."

Gibbs turns on him and Tony sobers his tone.

"Movie was based on an Agatha Christie novel, the ABC Murders, one of the Hercule Poirot mysteries. Randall played Poirot, a casting against type if you ask me. Killer takes out a series of victims, in alphabetical order this time, so when he hits his target no one's supposed to be suspicious of him."

Gibbs doesn't answer. They can see he's thinking about the possibility and doesn't care for it.

"At least it's not the Chicago Tylenol murders," Michelle says, evidently relieved not to have that one to investigate.

"Too well planned to be random," McGee counters. "In Wetzel and Presit's cases the window of opportunity was small. Galert's murderer stole an employee's uniform right out of the Laundromat a week ago, long before the Reagan docked."

"Abby found the locks had been picked in the Hudson and Presit murders," Ziva reminds them.

"Which I still have trouble," Tony cuts in, "reconciling with the image of the 'biker dude' Hudson described. 'Biker dudes' kick the door in."

"I agree," Ziva says.

"It _is _atypical," Michelle puts in.

"I'm going to see what Abby has," Gibbs says, already on his way out of the bullpen, his tone declaring that she'd better have something.

Spending another Saturday here is one thing, but he has no intention of spending Sunday here as well.

xxx

"Oh, my virgin ears," Sammy Sky exclaims over the video chat on Abby's office computer. Abby has just regaled her with Gibbs' misinterpretation of her coaxing answers out of the Facial Recognition program 'Peck'.

Because of Sammy's late evening rehearsal and her own early bedtime - coffin time - this is her first opportunity for personal affairs.

"Virgin. When were _you _a virgin?"

Sammy thinks it over. "Nineteen..."

"_Stop_."

"Why?"

"Whenever someone young as you begins an answer like that with 'nineteen', I don't want to hear the rest."

The blonde woman's laughter is high. "_I _was nineteen. God, Abby, what did you _think_?"

"With you I can never really tell."

"Just for that, I won't tell you how."

"No, go ahead."

She makes a show of starting to, then changes her mind. "No, come to think of it, _you're _too virginal."

"Thanks." She's not sure it's complimentary. "Guy or girl?" Sammy just hums a tune. "Bitch."

x

"Speaking of which, I'd like to hostess this week's 'Girls' Night'."

Abby laughs, and only part of it is because "You're living in my apartment."

"Then I should pay for everything."

Abby has no objections to that, even if it means her place is used twice in five weeks. The 'Girls' Night' had started among the women of NCIS some time ago, it had grown somewhat due to the stresses of the Internet Faking incident, but even after slacking off a bit it's become a staple among the women. Abby supposes it's something like the Wives' Group she's heard about from Tony, but among the 'Femgents'. There are only three rules: a different place each time (subject, apparently, to change now); no men - _ever_; and no holds barred. Everything is subject for discussion and everything stays in the (respective) home.

"You're on. I've always wanted steak at one of these things."

"Then you'll bring the vampire." The sustained delight crashes off Sammy's face at her mention of the word and Abby recalls her friend's second case with Gibbs' team. The Apprentice Medical Examiner had gone up against a psycho Vampire and, like Siobhan then-O'Mallory and Tony DiNozzo before her, had come up a distant second.

"No vampires at this dinner," Abby declares.

"Kind of a pity, you know?" Sammy Sky cannot fall below the level of delighted for more than a few seconds at a time. "Growing up, I used to adore the old Hammer movies. Those ingénues were _hot_."

"I think I'd better cancel you out," Abby threatens. "Everyone there is straight."

"Come on! I'm friends with 90 percent of anyone who comes and I don't prowl. Discretion is my middle name."

"No, it's Suzanne."

"Sorry I told you. I always thought dad carried alliteration too far."

"How's your friend?" she asks, not wanting to get into any conversation that'll reference Sammy's father.

The light in Sammy's eyes seems to flare red, an interesting if disturbing concept. "That ... _Bastard _beat her with a baseball bat," she declares. "Her face is wrapped like the Invisible Woman, she has seventeen broken bones, ruptured... It's a wonder she's alive. If her partner hadn't come home when she did she wouldn't be."

Abby had looked up the case, this is an extraordinary example of gay-bashing. For one thing, most of those happen outdoors, essentially a crime of opportunity, but the perp had come to Paula Massey's door and had started swinging as soon as it was opened. This sounds more like premeditated attempted murder than gay-bashing and she tells Sammy so.

"That's what I think too, but the patrol unit, hence all of Metro's decided it's gay-bashing."

"I'll make a call."

x

The light of gratitude is satisfying but when the chime behind her sounds, she doesn't even have a second to turn away from the monitor before Sammy's voice peaks in delight and she waves. "_Hi, Agent Gibbs_!"

"Hello, 'Chicky'." Abby turns in time to catch a glimpse at this rare moment of amiability.

"Awww, you remembered."

"Abs, what've you got?" She'd turned back at Sammy's 'awww' but has to snap around again and feels a pinch in her neck that silences her for an instant as she reaches to rub under her white star collar. Unfortunately, this gives Sammy a moment to say

"Agent Gibbs I was wondering, while Ducky's on vacation in Scotland for two weeks next month, could you use a hand?"

x

Abby's already heard about his contending with Karen Wetzel – "not even a FLETC graduate and worming her way in wherever she can" – and now Ducky's choice for a Substitute ME, Maura Isles from Boston. She's not a bit surprised when he reaches past her and turns off the monitor.

"She's still there," she reminds him with a smile. "She can see and hear us," she waves at the tiny camera port, "we just can't see or hear her." She turns the monitor on, catches Sammy holding a laugh behind hand covering her mouth.

"Would've been good enough for me."

Samantha's hand falls away, eyes and mouth wide.

Abby quickly uses her mouse, X's the connection and her friend's face vanishes. She knows she'll have fallout to deal with when she gets home but right now can only deal with the man standing impatiently behind her.

x

She swivels around in her chair. "I found something hinky on the knife that killed Presit," she announces, a segue that could cause whiplash if she'd been driving or hadn't turned the whole chair around. At least now she doesn't have to do the tennis thing between him and her monitor.

"What?"

"Blood." She won't flinch under his 'the knife was used to slit someone's throat' look; she's just revving up. "I analyzed the blood, it was fresh as Presit's, not very of course, but it was distinctive. The perp was a very careless perp. The blood drop was near the point, like our perp held the knife down hard to get the slit and missed. _Two_ cuts, perp and vic. _Guess _what I found."

He obviously doesn't want to, can probably think of plenty of better ways to spend a Saturday afternoon, but this'll cheer him up no end. "Come _on_, Gibbs, guess. You'll never guess it."

"Then why should I?"

"Okay, maybe not never, but hardly ever."

"Abs."

She raises her hands, gives the announcement every bit of relish she can. "_XX Chromosomes_."

x

He leans in on her, a move that'd make most other agents quail, but she's his favorite. "You telling me our perp's a woman?"

"_Yeppers_."

He scowls, straightens back up. "You've been hanging around Sky too much."

"Be gracious, Gibbs, _she's _the one who gave me the clue."

"How?"

"Well, Gibbs, she's bisexual and–" She doesn't expect to be halted by his upraised hand.

"Wait. You're telling me our guy's bisexual and you found it in his blood?"

She's disappointed. "Don't be silly, Gibbs." She starts to turn the chair back to her monitor. "Sexuality has nothing to do with blood, except as blood is affected by sex practices; STDs, HIV and the like."

He leans in and takes her shoulders in his hands, swivels her chair with her until she faces him directly. "Tell me."

"You're killer's a woman."

"DiNozzo and McGee brought up a man's image on the ATM camera."

"Well, Gibbs, much as I love Tony and like McGee - I don't love him like that anymore since he got married, that's Siobhan's job - they got it wrong. I don't know who the guy is that Peck has been wearing his sub-routines to a nub over, but a woman slit Presit's throat."


	28. And Grant Us Peace

Chapter Twenty Eight  
And Grant Us Peace

Gibbs is getting his thoughts regeared since Abby's announcement that PO1 Robert Presit of the Reagan's Communications Section had his throat slit not by a tall, muscular man with short black hair, two to three days beard growth, sweatshirt and worn, faded and patched jeans but by a woman. He refrains from asking if she's sure; despite taking Samantha Sky into her apartment while the Apprentice M.E. searches for a place to live, Abby hasn't made a mistake in sexuality since Grade School.

He firmly resists thinking about the loss of time in the misdirected search; there have been many missed turns in investigations and there'll be many more before he retires. Best to think of this new direction and how best to traverse it.

"Did you get any useful prints off any of the doors?" Hudson's and Presit's locks had each been picked.

"Glove leather. If you find the gloves, I can give you a probable match but without them," she gives a small shrug.

x

'Why would a woman kill Presit?' he wonders. If this were a land based victim he'd start running down everyone from the wife - absent at her parents' home and Presit had been called from there, alive - through a girlfriend to a murderous hooker. Who knew Presit was alone?

But a woman? Someone from the ship? He likes that even less.

For that matter, facial recognition and fingerprints and so forth haven't tracked the black man photographed entering and exiting Lieutenant Commander Wetzel's hospital room or the biker who bludgeoned Wilfrid Hudson and his wife, sending him to the grave and her to the hospital.

Sasha Nevelle's research has yielded no fruit either. She's been with Kelman's enhanced team - he's received okay reviews from the Supervisor on Karen Wetzel's performance - but nothing seems to tie the dead men to a motive for quadruple murder. Even the three from Mimran's Support Group that made it back to the ship, Brian Mimran, Edward Elbourne and Del McCourt, seem to have no particular reason to be targeted.

Rule 33, 'there are all sorts of reasons to commit a crime, they don't have to make sense to us', is too far reaching and inclusive this time.

xxx

Gibbs stalks back into the bullpen after his unsatisfying visit with Abby - a rarity - in no enviable mood, and the sight of a vacant desk does nothing to improve his spirits. "Where's Palmer?" he demands of her Field Partner but the intensity of his question leaves the man looking up at him in open mouthed silence, never a good idea.

"Lunch break, boss," DiNozzo cuts in.

Gibbs looks at his watch; okay, thirteen ten, it's reasonable. Somewhat. "Okay." He continues on to his desk.

"DiNozzo with the _save_," he faux exalts, miming a basket into his wastebasket.

"Then save this: That ATM ID you got is crap; Presit got his throat slit by a woman."

"No way, boss." He won't back down under Gibbs' glare. "The camera was on the corner of Presit's block, he was the only one who came and went within our window of opportunity, he had the bag with the knife on the way in, McBloodhound and I found it tied under that car. He may have had an accomplice, but it was him."

Gibbs restrains a flare of anger, he'd known and had forgotten that essential point. Has lack of sleep from pushing himself and his team let other things slip through the cracks?

"One hour break." His people look to him, surprised. "Go, do something, take a walk, smell some flowers but come back with new theories on what woman killed Presit."

xxx

Michelle Palmer wasn't surprised to get a call from the Chaplain's office not long after Special Agent DiNozzo returned to his desk. DiNozzo seemed calmer than she's seen him in weeks, a surprise after that potentially cataclysmic video confession, but she comes upstairs anyway, and isn't surprised to knock on the fourth floor office door and have her husband open it.

She hopes never to lose the flare of love that shoots through her every time she sees Jimmy, or the delight over feeling his body pressed to hers as they hug. She knows the priest is in the room too, she'll get to her in a minute, when she's done hugging.

She can't go as long as she wants, the door's still open and they're standing in the arch, and there comes a point where delay, ignoring their hostess, is just rude. She hopes she lets go before that point is reached. "Sorry," she says to the woman seated at her desk across the long room as she closes the door.

"Don't be," Siobhan says. "I hope you'll always greet one another like that."

She knows this doesn't always work out, and that they'll have more than their share of grief and stress, and she sees that Siobhan hates to add to it. The kindest thing she can do is to not draw the moment out.

"Would you please sit down?"

x

Something in the Priest's tone, her manner, scrapes the smile from Michelle's lips, makes her reach for Jimmy's hand. She'd spoken by phone to Siobhan the other day, but the request she'd made can't possibly be granted, can't have been negotiated, this soon.

When she and Jimmy sit side by side on the leather couch and Michelle holds her husband's hand more firmly, Siobhan wheels her chair before them, sits down and they join hands as they have many times before. The priest has two small cloth draw pouches, one round and little more than two inches large, the other cylindrical, which she's perched on her lap.

"Father," Siobhan begins while holding their left and right hands, completing their link that she'd feel more comfortable this time with if it were a Wiccan act, "you have promised that where two or three are gathered in your Name, you will be in the midst of them and bless them. Look with compassion upon your son and daughter, fill their hearts with your love and strengthen them. Give them the grace, when they hurt one another, to recognize and acknowledge their fault, to seek one another's forgiveness and yours. Make their life together a sign of Christ's love to this sinful and broken world, that unity may overcome estrangement, forgiveness heal guilt and joy conquer despair. Give them such fulfillment of their mutual affection that they may reach out in love and concern for others. Amen."

"Amen." Michelle recognizes these words as the prayer from their wedding, when nothing that followed could ever go wrong, when their lives together would be bliss, eternal and unhindered.

Why did it have to go so wrong?

x

Siobhan releases their hands and opens the first pouch of the pair perched upon her black skirted lap, pulls out a small plastic bottle, opens it and shakes a drop of oil upon her thumb, reaches out to Jimmy's forehead and inscribes a cross upon it as she says "James, I anoint you with oil in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen." She does the same with Michelle, yet encloses the cross upon Michelle's forehead within a star, a token of respect for her dual beliefs.

"As you are outwardly anointed with this holy oil, so may our heavenly Father grant you the inward anointing of the Holy Spirit. Of His great mercy, may He forgive you your sins, release you from suffering and restore you to wholeness and strength. May He deliver you from all evil, preserve you in all goodness and bring you to everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

She raises her right hand. "Almighty God have mercy upon you, forgive you all your sins through our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen you in all goodness," she inscribes the Cross before them, "and by the power of the Holy Spirit keep you in eternal life. Amen."

"Amen," they both repeat.

She takes the other pouch, opens it and draws out a round gold metal case inscribed with a raised Cross between wheat and grapes. She presses a small switch, raises the lid to reveal a dozen small round white wafers. She holds one before them. "The Gift of God for the people of God, take in remembrance that Christ died for you and feed upon Him in your hearts by faith, with Thanksgiving."

She offers to Jimmy the consecrated Eucharist which he receives upon his tongue, Michelle first in her hands before consuming it. They still follow the customs of their different denominations, still a sign today of their disparity which they strive, without success, to heal.

Taking one for herself, Siobhan closes and replaces the Pyx in the bag, rises and brings it and the oil to her desk, then returns, sits and again takes both their hands and they say together "Eternal God, Heavenly Father, you have graciously accepted us as living members of your son, our Savior Jesus Christ, and you have fed us with spiritual food in the sacrament of His Body. Send us now into the world in peace, and grant us strength and courage to love and serve you with gladness and singleness of heart, through Christ our Lord."

"Amen."

x

When she releases their hands and sits back Jimmy can no longer hold back the question that's been tearing at him since they began the increasingly familiar ritual which they use to begin their therapy sessions – the next of which isn't due for days now. "Mother, what's happening?"

"I wanted to meet with you at this time to prepare you."

The words tear Michelle's heart. This isn't what she'd expected the woman to say. "For what?"

"James, Michelle, we've had five sessions together, and I've tried to help you as much as I can, and I will continue to do so, but our next session together must be our final one."

x

"_Why_?" Jimmy bursts out, his hand slipping from Michelle's in his desperation. "Does – Is – Do you mean because you're resigning as Chaplain?"

She shakes her head. "I'm not resigning. I'm staying on. Reverend Grant and I will share duties, but I can no longer Counsel you."

"But if it's–"

"James, have you forgotten that when we started I reminded you that I'm not a Licensed Therapist? I've seen you as a Priest, and there are specific Guidelines I must adhere to. I may assist for a limited time, I've always used six as the number, but then I'm mandated to refer you to others for counseling."

"BUT–!"

"James, I explained all this to you."

x

His high anxiety collapses, he nods. "I forgot."

"I know you did. Believe me, you're not the first to."

"I just got used to– I just felt better with you than Doctor Gyves."

"That's flattering." She knows it's been hard for him to open up to a woman, doesn't know the challenges he's had with Gyves. "But please remember this is only a temporary additive. I can know nothing of your conversations with Milton Gyves, nor may I reveal to him anything I've learned."

"Must make some pretty short conversations." He tries to force the quip. It falls flat.

"Unless you help me by opening up."

"I'm _trying_."

Michelle takes his arm in her hands. "We know you are, sweetie."

"Yeah, like 'very'."

Siobhan sees the words shove Michelle away though she doesn't move. "James, time grows short and we know you're not doing this on purpose."

"I'm scared, and I've only just been able to tell her of what."

Siobhan looks to Michelle, but the silent anguish on her face admits to new barriers and after a few seconds she knows neither of them will speak to her now of this new problem. "All right, James, what do you want to talk about?"

x

The silence is so long Michelle fills it with "Jealousy."

"NO!" Jimmy bites hard enough to draw blood but Michelle won't back down, turns to Siobhan.

"He's jealous of me and your husband."

"NOT LIKE THAT!" Jimmy beats even Siobhan's reaction to this declaration.

"James," she says softly when she has his attention, "I know what you're feeling. I've always known. Shall we explore it?"

Resistance is a thick stone wall that crumbles in moments. He hangs his head. "Okay."

"You refer to what happened at the Hardbody Gym when Michelle and Timmy were locked in that steam room."

"_I'm not jealous_!"

"Not in the usual sense, no. You and I both know that your wife and my husband were trapped in that sauna heading up to 180 degrees, and gradually removed their clothing to try to survive; that when they passed out they were writing 'goodbye' notes to us."

"I know neither of them did anything," he declares in faux reasonableness.

"But."

"But nothing. I understand, I really do. The human body, exposed long-term to such heat will–"

"Say it."

"Say what?"

"What's been gnawing at you for weeks. Say it." He turns away from them, not easy because he's forced toward the wall behind him before he can see neither woman. Michelle holds her breath, Siobhan is relentless. "Say it."

Fury forces him around, his face red as he spits "Can you sit there and say it _doesn't bother you_ that we found your husband stripped to his shorts laying on top of my naked wife?"

x

Siobhan raises her hand to silence Michelle, who looks like she wants to protest, despite herself. A thong doesn't count for him and James deserves the answer.

"No, James, I can't say that. It bothered me. It bothered me a lot. Like you, I used reason to know that I can trust Tim, I used prayer - a _lot _of prayer - to protect my heart, but I have to confess I'm being more honest to you than I was to him. I prayed for strength, for shoring up, to remember that he did nothing wrong... but we're both in the same situation. My husband saw your wife almost naked and your wife saw my husband almost naked. But remember that as their last act they reached out to us. In your case that reaching out was more literal, in a way I confess I still have trouble reconciling with my own faith," she raises her hand again to Michelle, "a discussion for another time - but the fact is that it was that reaching out that saved their lives."

"I know."

x

Michelle prays to Minerva, prays desperately to the Maiden aspect of the triune Goddess, prays for Aphrodite to engage her love, prays to Isis, prays to–

"He didn't just see her 'almost naked', he hung over her while those damned _bastards RAPED_ her over and _over _and then left her tied wide open in front of him for hours!"

Michelle's clenched fists draw blood from her palms, she fights the screech that batters her clenched teeth but Siobhan holds up her hand to silence both of them.

"I know this as well as you do and yes, we will discuss it again." Dennis Whitney's brutality had been a nightmare for more than the four of them. She had believed it was her beloved Timmy who'd tried to rape _her_, and it took far too long until she could look at him without flashing back to that elevator, but "My _point _is neither of us has reason to doubt our spouse's fidelity, _regardless _of circumstances."

Jimmy reaches out, takes Michelle's hand. "I trust you. I always have. I..."

Michelle knows why he can't say it; rapidly changing futures have robbed him of his faith in any predictable one. She forces her teeth to unclench, clasps his hands tightly in hers. "_I always will._"

x

"It's easy to say 'keep the lines of communication open'," Siobhan says. "You've learned this year how hard that is to do, but you must try."

Jimmy turns to her. "Are _you _going to tell Agent McGee that you were... bothered?"

"Maybe. In time. Fortunately, I'm the one counseling you - at least one more time."

"What do you mean?"

She smiles. "I don't have to take your advice."

Jimmy's brief grin self-destructs. "Wait, you said 'Us', that 'We' could only meet with you six times, but what about–?"

"James."

x

He sighs, more defeated than understanding.

"What am I going to do?"

"You're going to carry on. Things aren't changing that much. There'll be but one more formal session more, true, but I'm still here, your friends are still here, your loving wife is still here," Michelle grasps his clasped hands tighter, "and you'll get through this with God's - and with our - help."

"I guess so."

She leans forward, fixes him with exceptional intensity. "_What was that_?"

He grins despite his anxieties. "I will."

"Good." She stands up, pushes her chair back to its place before the desk, replaces the Pyx and oil pouches into her purse and that high up on her arm. Then she returns to stand before them, reaches out, her hands on each of their heads. "May God grant you peace of heart, mind and soul and rekindle and renew your love for one another; may He rebind your hearts as one, your souls as one, your lives as one," she uses her right thumb to inscribe a cross upon each of their foreheads, but upon Michelle's she encloses it within a star, "in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

"Amen."

"Now if you'll excuse me, I'm late for my day off and tomorrow's Sermon isn't coming together _at all_. Just close up when you're done, the door locks automatically. I'll see you on Tuesday."

x

She's gone before either of them are prepared. Michelle looks at her watch, still another half hour for lunch.

"Where do we go from here?" Jimmy asks.

She takes his hands again. "Jimmy, I love you with all my heart. Talk to me."

xxx

"GIBBS!" Abby's yell through the supposedly turned off plasma screen an hour after the end of the enforced break makes Tony fall half out of his seat and his pen ricochet off the skylight to bounce near Ziva's desk.

"_She promised she wouldn't do that anymore_," he explodes, coming out from behind the desk to retrieve his pen.

Gibbs, who sympathizes with the man this time, crosses the bullpen, retrieves the control box from beside the unit and thumbs it on. "You broke your promise, Abs."

Their view of the lab is downward from the ceiling mounted security camera, Abby stands beside her freestanding workstation and even from this distance they can see the perplexed look upon her face.

"Broke my...? OH. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry, Tony."

DiNozzo, leading with an accusatory finger, stops sharply for two reasons: first, he's never yelled at Abby and second, it's a ceiling-mounted camera and she can't see him. "Well... don't let it happen again."

"I promise."

He restrains himself from saying 'you promised last time'. With Abby it's not so much a matter of there being no winning as his complete inability to stay mad at her.

"Abby," Gibbs reclaims the conversation, "what did you find?"

"I've found fingerprints on the black bag that held Presit's murder weapon. Since plastic folds every which way, putting the prints together is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces go in all kablacki directions, are partials of partials, that's why it took so long–"

"Not as long as this explanation."

Derailed, she rallies quickly. "Be gracious, Gibbs; genius isn't an assembly line talent."

"Always depended upon your genius, Abs."

"Awwww, thank you, Gibbs."

"As much as your brevity."

"Oh. Right. Brevity." She straightens to her full height, all the better to make her pronouncement. "Well, in all due brevity, I _know _who killed Petty Officer Robert Presit – and you are never going to believe it."


	29. The Plot Collapses

Chapter Twenty Nine  
The Plot Collapses

The five Agents cluster before the plasma screen in their bullpen and it's an even bet who wants most to reach through the screen and drag the answer out of the Forensic Scientist, though she stands safe in her half-underground lair.

"Who killed him?" Gibbs' voice is one he's never used with Abby, his 'if you drag this out I'll come down and drag out your tongue' one.

"_Missus Ruth Wetzel_."

xx

Any Special Agent making that stunning declaration would be met with ringing disbelief. It's a measure of their faith in her that no one entertains any doubt. Instead, the Field Agents follow Gibbs at double time out of Operations, down the stairs and Gibbs; first words as he bursts into the Forensic Lab are

"What've you got?"

Abby is where they'd last seen her, at the freestanding white console and continues as if the conversation had never been paused: "When the fragmented fingerprints started pointing me toward a completely unexpected direction and the DNA I told you about took me further, I did an expansion on the right and left profiles on Tony and Tim's suspect and look what I found." On the computer screen before her and reproduced on the wall mounted plasma screen appears an animation of the man's profiles coming together, turning full face and fleshing out. "Now this is a rendering," Abby narrates, "about 90 percent accurate is all one can hope for but watch this."

Beside the full face appears the reproduction of Ruth Wetzel's State Issued Driver's License. Abby manipulates this image larger until the head is the same height as the other, then the two move together.

It's not an exact match, but the contours are extremely similar. "Concentrate on the position of the cheekbones, the shape of the skull, the length of the nose, the depth of the chin, the so-called hard features that can be filled out but can't really be taken down.

"And by the way, this guy looks like no one on the freaking planet, neither does our John Doe who Rocuroniumed Lieutenant Commander Wetzel. Now we know why poor Peck has been exhausting himself for four solid days."

"Peck?" DiNozzo inquires.

"Never mind," Gibbs advises. He never wants to hear that name again.

It's still not exact, and the shadowing of the face enhanced from night ATM imagery isn't ideal, but there's enough there to make the most skeptical juror want to see more evidence.

x

"Where did Wetzel say she was at her business meeting?" Michelle asks.

"Pimmit Hills, Virginia," Gibbs says, "and Chesterbrook's not far at all."

"No, she did _not_, Boss." Tony rushes to the computer but pulls his hands back as though the keyboard might burn him. "May I?"

"You may," she says graciously.

He types rapidly. "Boss, it was while you and Probette were interviewing mom and daughter Wetzel in the Conference Room. You sent her out and I remember... I remember..."

"You remember what, DiNozzo?" He knows the man is delaying until he finds the footage he seeks, so he's unsurprised when his SFA's answer to a simple question is:

"This!"

x

'This' is footage from the upper corner Security Camera in the fourth floor Conference Room. Gibbs is on the right side of the table, Ruth and daughter Anne opposite him. Michelle Palmer had been beside him moments before, taking notes. He'd sent her to have DiNozzo and David bring Frank Norton in.

"Did your husband," Past Gibbs asks Ruth, "ever indicate he was having problems with anyone aboard the Reagan?"

"No, he told me nothing about any problems. I knew the ship was coming into Norfolk yesterday, but his having to go to the hospital, it caught me surprise.

"Where were you today?"

"My damned boss, he didn't care Bill was coming in yesterday, he sent me to another branch all the way in Chesterbrook. I had to stay for an early morning meeting that was totally useless, it could've been handled on a Conference call, then I got tied up driving back. I got the call about Bill from your agent on the way in when the office opened and someone could give him my cell number."

"When was the last time you heard from your husband?"

"I spoke to him three days ago, he confirmed when the ship was to be in. I was to meet him in Norfolk, at the docks, which is why I was so pissed."

At Tony's touch of a key, the image freezes.

x

"I love angry witnesses," Gibbs declares, though he's angry with himself that the slip got by him. 'I must be getting old,' he'll admit to no one but himself.

"Boss," McGee says, his little computer thingy in his hand, "distance from Pimmit Hills where she was supposed to be at the meeting - probably actually was - to the Presit home is 4.38 miles, 11 minutes at the posted speed limit."

Ziva cuts in, "Mary Presit is employed as a Theatrical Make-Up Artist for Screen Images, she commutes regularly between Virginia to Hollywood."

"Get those three in here, Wetzel, Presit and Galert. Palmer, drive down to Howard University Hospital, arrest Michelle Lee and put her in irons."

"_Gladly_, sir." She turns on her heel, her body language yelling her determination.

"Karen Wetzel is still in the building," Tony reminds him, "assisting Kelman and her team, along with Special Agent Afloat Nevelle in going over the case files from the Reagan."

"Leave her. Right now all we have is a pretty theory but it's the first one to fit the facts. I want them to confess. Palmer!"

She's barely had time to reach the door. "Sir?"

He'll let this one go. "After you cuff Hudson, _break _her."

After that 'Divorce' incident with Jimmy in the ladies' room, Michelle can think of nothing she'd love to do more.

xxx

Ruth Wetzel is in Interrogation One, Tony and Ziva have answered none of her questions since they drove up to her home, cuffed and brought her back, leaving her alone in the silent chamber. McGee and Special Agent Patrick Larsen have collected Peggy Galert from a house full of friends who had come to mourn and instead witnessed the arrest of their hostess on a charge of Suspicion of Murder.

In the same half hour Gibbs has taken down Mary Presit. There being no place to hold her in keeping with his Rule Number One, she is sealed in the Conference Room under guard of two agents until he decides he has time to deal with her.

x

Now, with DiNozzo and David in Observation, he steps into Interrogation One and his final encounters with the handcuffed Ruth Wetzel. He puts upon the table a folder.

"WHY AM I HERE?" she demands loudly enough to be heard in I2. Her hands are behind her, the chain through the chair slats.

He sits down, looking forward to this. It's been a long time since displays of emotion have had any effect upon him. "You seemed so interested in the progress of our investigation, I thought you'd like to know we've made a number of arrests."

"ARE YOU MAD?"

"No. Pissed that four sailors are dead while we sympathized with their murderers, but not mad."

She tries to charge him but, off balance with the cuffs threaded through the back of her chair, she can't get up and falls back into her seat.

Gibbs has had enough examples of her rage since Wednesday and these four days are enough for him to give the securement orders he had.

"Who came up with the idea?"

"WHAT idea?"

"Disguise you and the other widows as people who don't exist, kill each other's husbands."

"You're fucking CRAZY."

"Presit gave you all up." He watches the sledgehammer blow crash between her eyes. "She made up each of you."

He pulls from the folder and places before her the pictures from the ATM, left and right profile, then the ones Abby had created. On top he places the superimposed image.

"What'r those?"

He's never cared for answering stupid questions. The woman's eyes had given her up immediately; it's just a matter of making her admit it.

x

"Why did you do it?"

"Do what?"

He's never head-slapped a suspect, but she is working hard to be the first. "You, Peggy Galert, Mary Presit, Michelle Hudson, Regina Elbourne and Marie McCourt met either at the Wives Counseling Club or before, we'll work out which. You all wanted to get rid of your husbands and Presit had the skill to disguise all of you. She gave you all up so quickly the cuffs barely had time to get warm."

"Bill was in the way," she tells the table.

"What way?"

When Wetzel looks up she's looking for sympathy. He makes sure she finds none. "We've been separated our whole marriage. He'd be a month back, three weeks back, three days back - it was a wonder we were ever a family. He was a stranger to me, to my daughters. There was no place for him in my life, but when Michelle came to me with her plan it all made sense."

"What made sense?" To him, nothing does, even if he does have to admit – though not to her – that he's impressed by the complexity of this case.

"Her husband was a bastard who beat her senseless whenever he had a drink. Mary got married as a kid but didn't love her husband anymore. I had someone else but she just wanted out."

"So that's how Lieutenant Commander Wetzel was 'in the way', because you had a guy on the side?"

"_Yeah_." As emotional as she'd been, the true woman shows no regret at her husband's prolonged suffocation. Gibbs would prefer the rage.

x

"What went wrong? Why'd Hudson wind up in the Hospital?"

"She wouldn't kill, almost fucked things up, but she was used to taking a beating, might as well do it for four hundred grand in insurance and a lifetime of Survivor's Benefits too. She _volunteered _to take a pounding, make it look good. No one would believe any of us planned this if she was in the hosp–."

The door explodes inward on a shrill shriek. "YOU _BITCH_!" startles Gibbs into a second's immobility as Karen Wetzel flies across the corner of the table between them and both women crash to the floor in a torrent of screams and punches. "YOU MURDERED MY _DADDY_! YOU _MURDERED _MY _DADDY_!"

x

Arms cuffed through the overturned chair's slats, Ruth can do nothing but scream as her daughter, kneeling above her body, pummels her. David and McGee are only a second behind the berserk young woman but even three agents have difficulty separating the pair. She actually breaks out of McGee's grip to land one final devastating punch. Even when dragged to her feet, the wildly raging woman nearly breaks free before Gibbs and McGee lift her from the floor and carry the insensate woman into the corridor.

Ziva remains behind, seals the door after them, quite failing to cut off Karen's murderous screams. She turns to lift the woman and chair upright.

A loud, sharp crack of hand on flesh slices the screams and in the long moment of silence before pitiful weeping replaces them Ziva regards the bloody, barely conscious woman laying cuffed to the chair. She considers the appropriate nature of this payback. The sobbing on the other side of the door fades with distance and she expects Special Agent Gibbs' return at any moment and settles herself to observe Interrogation Part Two.

x

Moments later, when the hall is almost quiet, Gibbs opens the door and signs for her to come out into the hall.

"How did this happen?" he asks as soon as the door is closed.

She pitches her own voice as low. "Special Agent Larsen, on his return, informed Ms. Wetzel that all the widows were being arrested. She came to Observation, McGee and I allowed her to remain in hopes of gathering insight. Our attention on Ruth Wetzel's testimony, we were unprepared for Karen's act."

She sees in his eyes that this is the way he'll also write his report. She won't dwell on what the woman must have felt when she learned she'd been pressured by her mother even while being played. She'd been forced to provide an alibi for her mother by the intensity of the investigation the woman demanded. For days Karen had been played right into her mother's red hands.

"This is the second time family made it into Observation," Gibbs tells her, referring to when Sophia Bradley had seen the interrogation of her husband Thomas after his murder of Juliette Eastergarten and had immediately decided to divorce him.

"Yes, sir." She expects a merciless reprimand and steels herself to take it.

"Be more careful next time."

She's too surprised to say more than a quiet "Yes, sir."

Gibbs opens the door and goes to right Ruth Wetzel's chair and the woman herself. She's just starting to recover her senses after the assault, but Ziva, still in the hall, can feel nothing for her or for any of the widows.

"I would refer you to Special Agent McGee's wife," she says to the dazed woman before closing the door, "but in your case I do not believe Family Counseling has a prayer."


	30. Tied Ends and Broken Dreams

Chapter Thirty  
Tied Ends and Broken Dreams

"Tony called it 'Strangers on a Train' parts 1, 2, 3 and 4 on one reel," Gibbs tells Jennifer Shepherd that evening in her office, having trouble washing the disgust from his mind.

"Sounds appropriate," she concedes, "a tangled web of murder indeed." She comes out from behind her desk, feeling the need for movement. She walks over to the couch on the right side of the room and he follows.

"Not tangled, perverted. M. Lee Hudson was the prime mover in this, but six women to kill six husbands for a variety of reasons; we're still taking the lot of them apart."

"And not being gentle about it, I trust."

"No." They sit down and he rather longs for a bag of take-out. "Hudson broke first, if the time line's right."

"You sent one Michelle Lee to confront another."

"Seemed appropriate. _That _Michelle Lee doesn't believe in witches, of course, but she did believe that the pain _our _Michelle Lee could take away she could restore."

"She didn't." Shepherd won't make it a question; Jethro had better come back with the right answer.

"_Nah_. She can't. All Palmer did was cuff her to the two side rails and not let anyone interrupt the interrogation with meds until it was over. Hudson wasn't going anywhere easily, but now she can't even scratch."

"You know I don't approve of torture, Jethro," she says, but smiles at the thought of the mild torment, a miniscule punishment for what the woman did. There is, of course, serious question of if this constitutes torture but she'll leave that for the Legal Department to decide. M. Lee Hudson will be given all appropriate care for her injuries, but she's not leaving that room until she goes to an even smaller jail cell.

x

"Mary Presit is a movie make-up artist with Screen Images; she commutes between Hollywood and Washington," Gibbs sums up, leaning back into the couch, wanting the comfortable padding to help ease the tension in his back. "She made up each of the wives so no one would ID the non-existent men. She wanted her husband Robert to be the first victim so Ruth Wetzel took him out, slit his throat as a tall, muscular man with short black hair, two to three days beard growth, sweatshirt and worn, faded and patched jeans. Wetzel was supposed to be in Pimmit Hills, but she slipped up once and said she was in Chesterbrook."

"Don't you just love the careless ones?"

"Emotion's my best friend."

"You should try it some time."

He gives her a look meant to be devastating; but it's been years since he's enjoyed having any effect upon her. "Same night Regina Elbourne got made up as a black man in a blue hospital smock, got into William Wetzel's room and poisoned him with a dose of Rocuronium. Of course, Elbourne never got 'paid' for the deed, her husband got called back to the ship sooner than anyone expected; he's safe, as is Del McCourt. They never expected anyone to put the murders together so quickly."

"One or two bright spots of hope."

"I'd love to find some. Hudson had a Divorce in the works because he abused her. She didn't drop it, just decided on a more permanent solution, one he couldn't contest. Regina Elbourne was running up so many huge bills that hubby was worth more to her dead than alive. Wetzel had a new guy, not much older than daughter Anne, and if you thought Karen's reaction when she learned mom put out a hit on dad, you should've seen Anne when she found out about this."

"Hard to lose a parent either way, but I think that family's shattered."

"Anne was taken in too, but mom used Karen as a patsy, insisting she solve the case. She wanted to track if we were on to her. Driving Karen was a way of alibing herself."

"Karen was definitely closer to her father than the others were."

"He was her influence. She followed him as close to the Navy as she could and mom used her for that."

"Nice lady. What about the other motives?"

x

He leans back further. The couch just isn't helping. "We'll get them out of them. Hudson wouldn't kill, so she took the beating with a tire iron that landed her in the hospital, more to divert attention from the wives. She described a biker with leather and decals, tats, long black hair and unkempt beard; hardly a description of Peggy Galert, but that's who we looked for. It doesn't matter how well Galert was disguised, Wilfrid Hudson never stood a chance against both his wife and Galert."

Jennifer shakes her head, looking like she would call 'Enough' to this six sided conspiracy, but there's more.

"Marie McCourt took out John Galert with a shotgun. She's left handed, tried to hide it by firing righty but you can't. Firing from her weak side turned the gun to her right. Only a lefty is likely to miss as she had with Galert seven feet away."

"The smartest perps usually miss on something," Shepherd says.

"This wasn't smart, McCourt just thought it was. In trying to hide handedness, she called attention to it."

"I love the stupid ones."

"Oh yeah. And it didn't even help her. Del McCourt was supposed to be taken out later that night by Presit, but they ran out of time, could only get four of the six before McCourt and Elbourne get called back. I guess the others don't get a refund."

"Your gallows humor needs work, Jethro."

"Like I once told you, you find something funny in this, you let me know."

xxx

Tony DiNozzo enters the Forensics Lab through the open back door, sees Abby standing at her freestanding workstation, her back to him. He decides she needs to know what it's like to continually be scared out of wits by her yell over the supposedly 'off' plasma screen. He enters quietly, comes to a foot of the woman to snap her name in his best George Patten voice when the fine trembling of her body becomes too great to hide. Secure in her solitude, hard silent sobs wrack her body and she wipes tears from her eyes.

This isn't the reaction he'd planned on and all thought of evening the scales flees before his softening heart. "Abby?"

She whirls and he sees the astounding depth of misery etched upon her wet face.

"_TONY_." She clutches him desperately, face buried against his chest as she sobs, utterly shattered.

He'd ask 'who died?' He'd ask 'what's wrong?' but the woman clings to him, her piteous cries a universe away from his image of Abby Sciuto and he can only hold on as her violent sobs tear her apart.

x

Tony's not sure what to do other than hold on and pat the woman's back. A crying Abby is something he has absolutely no experience with, and all of Gibbs' Rules do nothing to prepare him for this. Even Rule 46, never touch a crying woman, Gibbs would hold in reverse, so he just holds on until the deluge abates.

It takes a long time, during which he racks his brain to figure out what could be so catastrophic as to break 'Happy Abby' like this. No one, well he's sure no one beside possibly Gibbs, has ever seen her cry but whatever brought this on tops even the supposed murder of herself and Sammy Sky a few weeks back.

Such intensity of grief can't be sustained indefinitely and in time the torrent slows and she backs away, wipes her eyes with her fingers. He offers her his handkerchief and inevitably she recovers her composure.

"I'm sorry."

"For what? Having a heart that can break? Your secret's safe with moi, but what can I do to put it back together?"

"You can't," she says, wiping her eyes with the cloth.

"Moi? _Can't_? Those words do not go together. I'm Montgomery Scott, the miracle worker even without an engine." She laughs, but it comes out broken. "Try me," he offers, serious now.

"You know my friend, Dawn Caldwell."

"Jefferson Parish by way of Clarkston Lakes last July. I remember." It's by far his least favorite memory concerning any of Abby's friends. The kindergarten teacher had been raped, suffered the aftermath until she killed her attacker, escaped jail time due to third-party circumstances and creative report writing such as Author Probie should be proud of, then she was brought up to Washington to recover, only to be beaten nearly to death and have to spend weeks in the hospital. 'Did she die?' He won't jump to this conclusion. "How is she?"

"I took her word. Like an _idiot _I took her word."

x

"Abby, can we for a minute pretend I just came down to say goodnight before taking a well-deserved half-weekend off?"

She tries to laugh, it comes out a heavy sigh, something he'd defy anyone else on the planet to manage.

"She told me she was fine, she was recovering from last summer. Every time I called it's 'great, fine, never better'."

"It's not so great."

"The other day she videoed me and I could _see _her, she couldn't lie over the phone but by gosh she _tried_. Made me suspicious that things aren't as good as she made out."

"How bad is bad?"

"She lives for those kids, but in November she had a breakdown. They put her in an INSTITUTION! She didn't spend long there but she's a psych out-patient but she's furloughed as a teacher, and I didn't know. I'm supposed to be her friend, I _babysat _for her and _I didn't know_!"

"She doesn't need a babysitter."

"No, she needs a friend and I'm hundreds of miles away. I was going in June to visit but that's changed - I'm leaving now."

"Now? Like right this very minute now?" He's sure that, given the urgency, she would - but is it urgent? Last July she'd been beside herself, actually fought _Gibbs _over time off and made some impressively ill-considered decisions. Is this to be an early annual rerun?

"No, not _right _now, but as quickly as I can find a substitute."

He flashes back to her Hawaiian vacation. "Not Doctor–"

"Ruby."

x

Apprehension over the choice made last year during her Hawaii vacation almost makes him miss the reference. "Ruby? You mean Ruby Rae from Edenvale? The boondocks? That Ruby?"

"She's a competent Forensic Scientist."

"For tumbleweeds and 'Cool Hand Lukeville'."

"Well, get used to her because she's my choice."

Can the shakeup get worse? "Is this near the time Ducky's on vacation with Jordan Hampton and Maura Isles is taking over for two weeks?"

"Just about the same. But don't worry, the Greater East Coast Comic Art Convention will be over by then so you'll have Captain America back."

"Oh, joy. _Wait a minute_ - WHAT?"

"Ooop, I wasn't supposed to say anything. Darn it, Tony, see what you made me do?"

"Never _mind_. I'm just over Siobhan's pregnancy, so don't say _anything _- I don't _want _to know." He extends his hands, takes hers. "I hope things come together with your friend, but just remember: we're friends and I'm here for you."

"That's why I love you, Tony."

He grins, hoping to ease her mood further. "Don't let Jeanne hear you say that."

"Don't worry, your two-timing secret is safe with me."


	31. Evaluation

Chapter Thirty One  
Evaluation

Jennifer Shepherd regards the young woman standing opposite her desk with a critical eye. She's seen a lot of the FLETC trainee and fledgling NCIS prospective Special Agent in the past week, more than she'd normally expect and far more than she'd hoped for.

It's nearly eleven and she hadn't wanted to have this encounter so soon today, but William Wetzel's wake begins this afternoon. She wants the young woman to have closure here so she can devote her attention to saying goodbye to her father and dealing with her vastly changed and rapidly changing family.

The twenty year old had come into this case as a grieving dependent and had wormed her way into the investigation and then actually got herself 'unofficially attached' to Melanie Kelman's team and their investigation. If she rather than Gibbs had made the decision, Shepherd might have had Wetzel banned from the building or confined to a Holding cell for the duration.

But the woman had served competently - for a neophyte - and she'd gone from coming in losing a father to leaving knowing her mother had contracted his death after becoming a stranger's murderer and had used her as a patsy in a conspiracy too warped for words.

It's because of her grades at FLETC, her competency working with experienced agents, the devastating shocks of her parents' fates and that legendary slap - oh, _how _she wishes she could've seen it other than on a Security replay - that the woman is before her now.

x

"I've evaluated the reports of the agents you interacted with. Your job performance was credible."

"Thank you, Director." She seems to take great satisfaction in what she evidently considers high praise. Her next word wipes the self-satisfaction from the girl's face.

"_However_, _dis_satisfaction runs even deeper." Yes, the smile is gone. She intends to make sure it doesn't come back. "From Day One you were told you could not work this case and I would have ex_pec_ted even an Agent-Trainee to understand why. Not only were you emotionally tied to this case, a situation that can too often potentially distort the kind of dispassionate judgment we need to pursue investigations to a successful lawful conclusion but anything you found could have been compromised or be successfully challenged and thrown out of a court case simply because you were personally involved."

"But ma'am, I worked the Hudson and Previt cases."

"Which were ultimately linked to that of your late father." Shepherd gives quite enough edge to her tone to convey to Wetzel just how little she appreciates being interrupted.

"Yes, Director." She's evidently properly contrite but, Shepherd senses, not cowed. She's pleased but won't show it. The woman is taking some hard knocks and bouncing back.

Let's see if she can rally from harder ones.

"In particular, I note that you repeatedly inserted yourself into these cases when you were directed not to. I distinctly remember you realized your duty was to leave Headquarters the other morning and you did not do so."

"Ma'am, I couldn't."

"Believe it or not, I do understand it though I do _not _condone it. Your behavior, your disobedience of directives, would have gotten a full-fledged Agent suspended pending Review of her Status." She gives Wetzel a moment to appreciate that. "You interrupted an Interrogation." She imagines no one will ever do so on that scale again.

"That Bitch killed my father."

She won't debate the directness of the guilt. When Ruth Wetzel and the others laid their plan for murder, they became as guilty of the murders as a whole as well as of those they'd actually killed.

"I've read the evaluations from your Training Officers at FLETC. They generally show a woman with great potential–"

"Thank you, ma'am–"

"But _I _see someone who needs to find balance between enthusiasm and discretion, and most _especially _self-control and discipline."

"Yes, ma'am."

"There is no place in NCIS or any other Federal Law Enforcement Agency for someone who disregards a direct order."

"But director, no one ordered me not to participate–"

"Did Special Agent DiNozzo _lie _when he reported that he told you you can't be involved?" She sees Wetzel realizes she knows the situation in far more detail than she thought.

"No, ma'am. But though he did say I can't, he didn't order me not to."

x

Shepherd leans forward, hardens her expression and tone. "Do you often use semantic loopholes to get what you want?"

"No, ma'am," she answers sheepishly.

"What, then? Do you outrightly disregard inconvenient rules?"

"I... Permission to speak freely, Director?"

x

Very few people have ever applied that military request to her, NCIS being an organization that created the concept of the informal, at least in communication. Free speech is the norm, always valued; nevertheless, she gives ten, fifteen, twenty seconds of hard-eyed silence before "Granted."

"Director, if you have the most recent report on me you know that the day my dad was murdered I also washed out of FLETC; that the only reason I'm going back to Georgia is to collect my things - which have probably already been boxed up. I had one opportunity - while still an Agent-Trainee, at least in your people's eyes - to use the resources of NCIS to catch my father's killer. It wasn't to get back in FLETC's good graces, to show them that I _can _be an Agent, that I do have potential even if I can't get back in; it was that I could solve my one-and-only case, that I haven't wasted my time, that I can be an Agent even if no one in the world believes that. That was my number two reason."

"And your number one?"

She leans forward, hands flat on the desk. "Since I'm now completely fired _and _fried, I'll tell you to your face that I was going to do everything in my power to get the bastard that murdered my dad, and that while I'd've kept to the law there are some rules that had to be moved aside because _nothing _was going to stop me." She's running herself long, barely pausing for a breath. "I washed out of FLETC, but before any of you found out about that I was going to get my dad's murderer, use every resource of NCIS within reach that I could beg, borrow or steal and I don't give a _fuck _what rule I had to shove aside because I was going to put that fucking bastard down."

x

"Are you done?"

"Yeah, I'm done." Half breathless, but she's done.

"Then get off my desk." Wetzel straightens and Shepherd wonders if this is what she looks like when she thinks of her endless quest to take out 'La Grenouille'. "What happened that you washed out of FLETC?" From what she'd read in the young woman's records, that doesn't seem likely.

Karen's evidently galled by the humiliating memory as she tells the story about the early morning Training Exercise, the infiltration of the faux North Korean Embassy, her supposed success which crashed to utter ruin when her partner murdered her and how she'd then spent the next hour being ripped a new one by the Review Board, all topped off with the news her father had been murdered.

x

Shepherd watches Wetzel almost rupture blood vessels when she smiles.

"Only an hour, they must not have found much to criticize." Karen's rage clawing at her mind is so easy to see, and Shepherd watches it rear back. "I took six rubber bullets that hurt like hell when I failed and then they 'ripped me a new one', as you put it, for nearly two hours, reduced me to tears before they were done and sent me to my room."

Karen gapes down at her and Shepherd grins. "Hardly one in twenty survive their test and _no one_ makes it past the Board without bloodshed, because _that's _part two." She leans slightly forward. "Haven't you ever heard of the Kobayashi Maru?"

"Well sure, I–"

x

It's interesting to see the light come on in the young woman's eyes. Even with a noted interest in Science Fiction in her FLETC files that almost rivals Agent DiNozzo's flair for movies in general, she probably never imagined she'd encounter a mythical Star Trek technique in real life.

Shepherd expects that the young woman had been called up to Washington before anyone could enlighten her and convey the real score of the two-pronged test. It's just as well, for she'll probably realize some day that this conversation makes it not a pitchfork but a trident.

"_Shit_," Karen exclaims and Shepherd knows she's probably remembering quite a bit of how she'd expressed her outrage. Junior non-agents do not speak to their Director as she had. "I've just talked myself out of the job, didn't I?"

"Very likely." She isn't above giving a few extra jabs with said trident.

"Director - ma'am, I'm _sorry_. What I meant so say was–"

"I'll be communicating my own evaluation of your performance to FLETC. Dismissed."

x

It looks like to move would shatter the young woman but she does manage to stone her face, turn - about face actually - and walk to the door. She doesn't, however, make it further than her hand on the lever when she looks back. "One last thing?"

"There's always going to be 'one last thing' with you, isn't there, Wetzel?" She wonders if the young woman perceives the tense of her words.

"Am I going back to Georgia to pack?"

Evidently she hasn't; but it's equally certain to Shepherd that she will. She knows she can ease a lot of the trainee's anxieties with the reassuring truth but "Dismissed."

Wetzel's expression would be fitting for Mount Rushmore, but she leaves.

x

Shepherd has decided uncertainty will do the young woman better good than assurance will, as the student still has much to learn and lessons never end. She never wants to run an NCIS where progress hinges on blind obedience to orders, yet rules exist for valid reasons. Initiative in an agent is commendable but it must be balanced with discretion else a bullet can end a career, particularly one just beginning.

She turns to her computer. She _will _send a report on the girl's - young woman's – the trainees seem to get younger every year – handling of this case and herself, but her evaluation of the still potential agent will not go to FLETC Administrator Mark Zito; it'll go out west, to someone who can instruct an agent even better than FLETC might.

Eventually an application will cross the California SAIC's desk, and if anyone can cut the rough stone and polish the gem that remains, it's Henrietta Lange.

o

Next Episode: Supervillain Affair.

It's been a year since the Memorial Day Weekend 'Greater East Coast Comic Art Convention' that changed so much of Tim McGee's life. He's looking forward to a weekend away from NCIS to make up for last year's Convention's madness, but he's never imagined this.


End file.
